The last time I was in a church was a funeral in 2022.
I was raised Catholic. Catholic school through fourth grade, church several times a week, prayers before dinner, prayers before bed, and every single Sunday morning in a pew. okay you get the point.
I was into it. And then I loathed it. I counted down the minutes and stared off into la-la land through the singing, waiting for it to be over.
My kids have never been to church. My oldest is five now, and it makes me feel kinda weird.
Because even half-asleep in that pew, I was getting something. A rhythm to the week, commitment, discipline, rituals, morals and values. Once a week, a room full of people who cared about roughly the same things stopped together and thought about something bigger than themselves.
I can’t prove it, but I think it did me some good.
I’m more spiritual than religious, and I’ve never loved the organized part of organized religion. (Whole other letter.) But I do love the community part, and we have a lot of that where we live.
Still, I catch myself wondering what I’m putting in that space instead. How are my kids learning gratitude, and values, and that the world is bigger than our house?
I’d love to believe they’ll soak it all up by osmosis from living with us. I also know that isn’t a real plan.
We have a ton of family time. What we don't have is time set aside to pause together and talk about the bigger-life stuff. And I'd like to start.
And to add to it, summer happened, and we came out of it with a bad screen habit. TV most nights before bed. Phones out more than Id like to admit. And I was starting to feel a little nervous that we’d let it get to the point of no return.
So a couple of weeks ago, we tried something new. The idea came from Instagram. I’m aware. (I learned to put my phone away from my phone. Yupppp. okay)
A woman I follow, Siece Campbell shares her “whimsy life in the California sun”, and every Sunday her family keeps a Christian based Sabbath. I’ve watched her do it for a few months (from my phone) and, well, I was inspired.
So I decided to make our own loose, borrowed, definitely-not-official version.
Quick context if you didn’t grow up with it (I didn’t): Sabbath comes from the Jewish tradition. Shabbat runs from Friday sunset to Saturday sunset and sets apart time for rest, worship, family and meals. The practice was later adopted in different ways within Christianity, with many Christians observing Sunday as a Sabbath.
Ours is considerably less official.
I made up three rules.
1) No screens.
2) No plans.
3) Family time.
The night before, I told our close friends and family: tomorrow we’re off our phones, we have zero plans (on purpose), and if you want something, you have to come knock on the door or we’ll get back to you Monday.
The day nothing happened
On Sunday, September 6th, I woke up and reached for my phone, because of course I did, checked the time, caught myself, and immediately put it in the drawer.
I picked up Living with the Monks by Jesse Itzler, borrowed off a friend’s bookshelf, and yes, I spent the beginning of my first phone-free day reading about a man who went to live with monks without his phone.
Solid read. Not super great. But I read uninterrupted for a full hour and a half. An hour and a half! Which basically never happens anymore.
Time seemed to stretch out. Geesh, I even considered moving to the bath. (Next time.)
My son, Rory, woke up first, found me reading, and wanted to read too. I didn’t ask him to. So I guess it turns out modeling works. Annoying.
That was the day we finished the first Harry Potter book, which we’d started two months earlier and then lost somewhere in the summer craziness and the grip screens got on us. He’s five. So I paused constantly to make sure he was following since we hadn’t read it in a while, and he was. The whole way through. Then board games. Card games. Breakfast with nowhere to be.
And at some point I looked at the clock. 10 a.m. Only ten! On a normal Sunday, ten is around when my brain registers: dang, where did the morning go, we need to get to the next thing, where are your shoes?
Nobody needed shoes. Because we had nowhere to be and nobody to report to.
Friends knocked on the door, unannounced, no texts. We hung out for a little. After lunch and a short nap, Rory said he wanted to go to the aquarium. My first instinct was no.
Then Greg and I looked at each other. Why not? We have year-long passes. It’s free. And zero plans was the whole point. So we went. No research was done. No pictures were taken. We just packed up some snacks, a change of clothes and went.
It wasn’t a capture-the-day day. It was a be-in-it day. And with nothing in my hand, I kept noticing the little things with the kids. The tiny expressions on their faces when a giant shark swam by. The questions I probably would’ve half-heard while checking something else.
Then tacos at El Tesoro, the new one in South Downtown, with the little play area out back. And home. A little tidying. More books. Early bed.
We did not float through the day like a monk.
We used Google Maps to get to the aquarium.
We played a Magic Tree House audiobook in the car for the kids.
I texted my niece to see if she wanted to meet up for dinner, since we were around the corner from her place.
Spotify played music on our Alexa.
And Greg did it halfway, which is fair, because this was my experiment and I didn’t force it on him. After the kids went to bed, he scrolled his phone, put a game on TV, and planned our entire beach day at Callaway Gardens for the next day.
I reached for my book.
What I didn’t see coming
It slowed everything down.
The day felt weirdly enormous. Like we’d somehow fit a whole weekend inside one Sunday.
And I think the reason was boredom. We almost never get bored anymore. Every little in-between moment that I normally fill by reaching for my phone stayed empty.
Waiting for someone to get dressed. Sitting on the couch for three minutes. Standing in the kitchen while something heated up.
Nothing rushed in to fill those spaces. And there was this strange freedom in nobody expecting us to respond. Not one text owed. Nobody trying to capture our attention or sell us something.
In a world that’s more and more and more all the time, a day with nothing in it felt like getting away with something.
I thought it might feel like a chore-yuck day. No screens. Eat your vegetables. Fun police have arrived. It was the opposite. Telling everyone what we were doing, and why, made it feel special. By bedtime I felt satisfied and connected in a way I can’t remember feeling on an ordinary Sunday.
It followed me into the rest of the week. Since that Sunday, I’ve been reaching for my phone less, especially around the kids. One day without it loosened its grip on the next couple of weeks.
And then I chickened out
So naturally, last Sunday, I didn’t do it.
It would’ve been a perfect day for it.
We did a ton, and I wasn’t even on my phone that much. But I started the morning on it like I always doooo, and I never said the words out loud: Today’s the day. I sort of planned to, in the we could do it if it feels right way, which, it turns out, is how to not do it.
I can’t totally tell you why I bailed. My best guess is that the things I dodge for no reason are usually the ones that are good for me.
But I learned something from skipping it: Nobody drifts into a phone-free, no-plans day.
It has to be named. It has to be protected. And apparently, in my case, it has to be put on the calendar.
So I’m naming it
This Sunday, September 27th. Then twice a month for the rest of 2026. Same three rules, same drawer. With plenty of room to make it up as we go
We’re calling it Sabbath-ish Sunday.
One thing I want to try this week is making dinner feel different from the other six days. I’ve heard of families doing a shepherd’s dinner or candlelight dinner where nobody really cooks, dinner is basically a big charcuterie board, and the table is lit with candles instead of overhead lights. Or, if the weather cooperates, maybe we eat over a campfire. I first heard about the idea years ago and have been meaning to do it ever since.
Which is sort of the whole problem, isn’t it? Meaning to make space for something and actually making space for it are not the same thing.
It’s not church. But it is a pause. On purpose. Together. And that’s the part we’ve been missing.
Someday I’d love for it to hold more. Volunteering. Learning about all kinds of religions, beliefs, cultures. Nature. Gratitude. Bigger conversations about what we believe and how we want to live. This was just one Sunday.
Will it give my kids what those Sundays gave me? I have absolutely no idea. For now there’s a drawer, and somewhere around ten AM this Sunday, I’m hoping I look up at the clock and once again think “I can’t believe it’s only ten.”
Come do nothing with us
If this sounds good to you, try it with us this Sunday. Pick your own rules. Make them more traditional. Make them way less traditional. Steal mine.
A couple of friends already told me they’re going to try it out with us.
Tell your people the night before. Put the phone in a drawer. Then come back Monday and tell me how it went, every rule you broke included.
xx,
Gina
P.S. The rules, if you want to steal them:
No screens. (Maps, a car audiobook, and Alexa got a pass. Your house, your rules.)
No plans. (except my husband’s standing morning pickleball game)
Family time.
Tell your friends the night before, so nobody’s waiting on a reply. And the phone goes in a drawer.
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I’m Gina. I spent 15 years in tech marketing, the last stretch helping scale a company from $2.5M to $425M, and in 2025 I left with zero plan to see if I could find a different way to work and mom. Now I write from a weird little wellness town in the woods outside Atlanta.
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