Are You Resting This Summer?

AnneMarie Miller ponders the challenge of making time to rest during summer break.

It seems like every year once school begins, other people tell me that summer is just as busy as the school year. Between summer camps, family vacations, and household projects, it’s easy for summer days to fill with activity. While it’s a more relaxed kind of busyness than the school year, I wonder if it’s good for to constantly be so busy.   

When will we slow down to pray and hear God’s voice? When will we “waste time” with our families? When will we give our kids (and ourselves) a chance to grow bored and discover new ways to be creative and enjoy our time?  

Let’s sit for a moment and reflect on our summer schedule so far. Have we packed our days with outings and activities to the extent that we are overly busy? Have we made time to rest, both alone and as a family?  

To Cancel or Not to Cancel?  

I recently looked at my calendar and realized that in one week, we had an outing planned every single day. Since I have five children ages 9 and younger, it’s extremely important that we make time to rest at home, and we don’t often have big outings planned every day. I wondered if I should cancel any of the outings on our schedule that week.    

Yet, when I considered it further, I realized that most of those outings were paired with Mass and involved seeing friends whom we don’t see often. If we didn’t see them that particular week, when we had time and were all healthy, we may not see them again for several weeks! So, I decided to keep those outings on the calendar. At the same time, I ensured that we still made time to rest at home. In some cases, this meant staying home all morning and only going out around lunchtime. On other days, this meant staying home all afternoon. I also looked at the following week and set aside a day or two as “home days,” where we would not go on any big adventures.   

Meet Your Family’s Need for Rest  

Each family is different and has varied needs. Families with only young kids may need to keep an even slower pace of life, and families with older kids may be able to take on more commitments without becoming overly busy. However, no matter what ages our kids are, we can all benefit from taking moments to rest this summer: to lay on the couch at home with books, to give our kids time to create art or play games, and to give ourselves moments to simply enjoy being together.  

Are you resting this summer? Take a moment to sit with this question. Making time to rest in the summer is often difficult and means saying “no” to good opportunities. Yet, I’ve always found that it’s worth it.  

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Copyright 2025 AnneMarie Miller
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