Early in my healing, I enjoyed ongoing fellowship and community with my church family. Then I started seeing a lot of signs that someone on our worship team was unknowingly in the occult and my system started breaking down at church. When I could no longer control the switching, I overheard a lady telling the pastor’s wife that she knew what I needed. She wanted to cast my parts out as if they were demons, so I ended up leaving the church not long after that. There were so many people there that I loved and still miss to this day. I long for the day that the church becomes trauma-informed and wakes up to the realities of satanic ritual abuse.

I’d never heard it discussed that Saturday was the Sabbath growing up. I was only taught that we met on Sunday’s because it was the first day of the week and representative of a first fruits offering. I love the idea of committing the first day of our calendar week to the Lord in that way. I know how to feed myself spiritually and how to worship at home, but I miss starting my week off with corporate worship and fellowship.

Somehow, I grew up assuming that Sunday was the Sabbath because people went home and took naps after a family lunch. I never experienced that in my home, but that was what I thought everyone else did for whatever reason.

I got introduced to the Torah movement about 6 years ago. While it had some good in a lot of areas, none of us have it all right. What really made me struggle were those who acted so righteous while condemning those who were still trying to figure things out. I saw a lot of rules and dates to keep, things I must do and things I could never do again. After exploring it for a season, it just did not resonate with the love of the Father and what the Bible tells me that He has for His children.

I did not walk away empty handed or without growth, but I did lay down the legalism and pick back up the intimacy of relationship with Yeshua. As painstakingly difficult as it was, I am grateful for a better understanding of the feasts and a newfound love for keeping the true Sabbath.

Going from a cult infiltrated church to a cult infiltrated Torah congregation was like going from the frying pan into the fire. I’m not saying everyone is cult, but I do believe that 99% of churches and congregations of every denomination have at least a few cult members on assignment.

The scars have mostly healed, and I’ve learned some hard-earned lessons. I met some great people in the Torah movement, but as I look back, the ones that are still in my life today have all taken a step back from it in an “eat the meat and spit out the bones” kind of way. After I questioned, challenged, and studied out my own theology and why I believe what I do, I’ve finally moved from the pitfalls of both to find a little more balance. It’s all about relationship. It has always been about relationship.

John 13:34 – A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.

Romans 13:8 – Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.

1 Peter 4:8 – Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.

1 Corinthians 13:13 – So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

I used to think Sabbath meant stopping all work, silencing the noise, and stepping away long enough to call it rest. But even when I stopped physically, my system would still feel like it was having a hyperalert overdrive tantrum. My thoughts didn’t slow down, my emotions didn’t settle, and my body stayed in fight, flight, or freeze.

Rest didn’t feel safe, it felt lonely. Stillness felt exposing and carried a quiet vulnerability that felt like it had to be kept secret. Anything that resembled letting my guard down felt like a risk my system wasn’t willing to take, and I was too dissociative to even realize they were struggling.

So, I tried to keep the Sabbath the only way I knew how…at home, alone, fighting the emptiness of not having family or friends. I thought that if I could just get everything around me quiet enough then the chaos inside might settle down. But no matter what I did, it still felt scary and lonely and dreadful most of the time.

Isolation is not keeping Sabbath and disconnecting is not the same thing as resting. We fight from a place of victory in knowing Yahweh has us. In the same way, we rest from a place of knowing Yahweh has us.

We turned off the computer today, sat on the couch with the dog, enjoyed time with family, spent extra time in the secret place, and talked with friends about all that Yahweh is unfolding in this season. We explored new creative outlets that came to mind as we turned the worship music up, had a nice lunch. We even took a nap.

Nothing about today felt lonely, or isolating or sad. Nobody was fearful or worried. There was nothing dreadful about yesterday leading up to today, no disappointment that it was Friday or feeling like the world will shut down and shut me out for the next 24 hours.

It took me a long time to get to this place, where I could embrace stillness and long for the peaceful retreat of a comfy Sabbath at home.

I never thought I would be able to experience Him as a loving Father, but now I wish I could give away the joy that comes from simply being with Him in the everyday moments. Keeping the Sabbath about relationship with Him has changed everything for me, and I wish I could pour into those who are still in that place of loneliness what spending time in the secret place has given me, so they could finally taste and see how good it is to be seen and heard so intimately by our Abba.

I’m learning that rest has an order, and when I try to reverse it, it doesn’t work. My spirit has to go first and sometimes it needs some encouragement. That is the place where I connect with Him and my prayers become conversations and my heart starts to overflow with hope of His good plan for me. If my spirit is not engaged with Him, then everything else in me is trying to find rest without a true connection to Him.

Our body, soul and spirit are meant to work together. My system couldn’t slow down because it’s my spirit that is seated in heavenly places. My spirit hears the rhema words and shares them with my soul. Only then can my mind, will, and emotions help my body express it in the natural.

When my spirit connects with Him, my system starts to recognize that I am not alone in that moment, and that helps me bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. Once I can do that, it’s a wonderfully relaxing joy filled Sabbath.

But there are parts of me that don’t trust that yet. There are places in my system that have been trained to believe that rest is dangerous, that slowing down means something will get through, that connection means exposure. When I begin to move toward Sabbath as relationship instead of control, I can still feel resistance rise up sometimes. I feel the urge to distract, stay busy, and avoid staying present or slowing down enough to consider all that has happened in the past week. It’s still hard to be still some days, but my relationship with Him is always worth it.

Real Sabbath is not something I can create by checking off all the boxes. It’s something I enter.

As more parts of my spirit heals and aligns with Him, my soul begins to follow. My thoughts start to quiet because they are no longer trying to control everything. My emotions begin to settle because they are no longer carrying everything alone. Eventually my body, soul, and spirit all get on the same page, and it feels like being wrapped in my favorite warm blanket by the One who loves me most of all.

For me, Sabbath is simply being in relationship, resting in His love for us, having two-way conversations with Him over coffee and finding Him in all the little things that I’ve slowed down enough to finally see.

I still have moments where nothing feels settled and my system pushes back. I still have days where rest feels just out of reach. But I’ve learned that connection is everything and if we just keep showing up, He will always meet us there.