Making Room for Shalom

Making Room for Shalom
By Jenna Pearsall

A few years ago, I read a study that hit me like a gut punch. It said that by the time we turn 18, on average, we’ve already spent about 90% of the time we will ever have with our parents and siblings. Before adulthood, we see our families almost every day. And then life happens—college, careers, new relationships, and distance. Weekly visits become monthly. Monthly becomes a few times a year. And suddenly, time with the people who formed us becomes precious and finite. This reality scared me, and for me it is still an uncomfortable truth.

When you look beyond the drama and the thunder and lightning of the ten commandments being given at Sinai, this parasha concerns itself primarily with family matters, and urges us to prioritize family and the peace that comes with working on our own relationships, with our parents, our in-laws, our spouses, and our kids.

Growing up in Michigan, I had an idyllic childhood, and I was always surrounded by family. I felt this tremendous comfort when around my parents and brother, a pull towards them that led to a lot of emotional moments during sleepovers at my friends’ houses and overnight summer choir camp. I remember many times when I woke up at a friend’s house, wanting to go home, crying and being driven home in the middle of the night by my friend’s parents to the awaiting safety and security of my own house. Summer camp was really tough for me, crying myself to sleep the first few nights and getting to the point where one summer I smuggled my pink flip phone into the camp just to talk to my mom and dad when I needed their support. My camp counselor ended up hearing me talking on the phone in my cabin and confiscated my one lifeline to home, but it was totally worth it to my 12 year old self to have maintained that link to my parents for a few days of being away. Even in college, that first year I got in my car and drove the 45 minutes home just to feel the normalcy of my family unit again, a weekend back in my comfortable bubble. I also had ulterior motives because I was studying computer science at the time and the projects were so impossible I needed my computer software engineer dad to bail me out, but that’s neither here nor there. Thankfully for everyone involved, I ultimately chose a different path.

The title of this week’s parasha is Yitro, named after Moses’s father-in-law, a Midianite priest, who comes to Moshe with his wife Tzipporah and their sons in tow. There was a tremendous amount of respect between Moses and his father-in-law, as we read in verse 7 that Moses greets him by bowing low and kissing him. Moses listens carefully to his advice and respects his opinion, even though Yitro delivers him some quite critical feedback. This respect was returned to Moses, as he rejoices in his son-in-law’s successes and remarks how wonderful it is that God has shown kindness to Israel, delivering them from Egypt. He even makes a ritual sacrifice to God, honoring his commitment to Moses and the Israelite people, even though he was not truly a member of the tribe.

Not only did Yitro bring Moses’ family to his side for nourishment of his soul, he came bringing words of advice that would go on to fundamentally change the structure of Israelite leadership. He knew that what Moses needed in a time of high stress and many burdens was his family by his side and a new system of delegation of tasks that would create chiefs to rule over smaller groups within their community. Yitro was essentially reminding him of a concept we now know today as work-life balance, and how that balance can impact our wellbeing and our souls if it is tipped to one side or the other. Moses, we learn in this parasha, was not very good at work-life balance. He was kind of a workaholic, going all in 100% of the time serving his people. Now, I don’t blame Moses too much for this approach, us clergy are pretty bad at this concept as well, but we can take a page out of Yitro’s book to remedy this potential imbalance of priorities. When Yitro observed Moses sitting as magistrate for the entire day, he exclaimed, “What is this thing that you are doing to the people? Why do you act alone, while all the people stand about you from morning until evening?” Yitro is not only suggesting that this is hurtful to Moses himself because of the burden he is taking on, he is also implying that by taking on too much, the people who he is intending to serve are actually negatively impacted, standing from morning until evening just to get help.

The Ten Commandments, given later in this parasha, also affirm Yitro’s message of balance. We know by now that the Torah says work is a mandated part of our covenant with God, and the ten commandments remind us that we must labor six days of every week. But, in the same breath, God also gives us mandated rest. “Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of the eternal your God, you shall not do any work.” We can’t skirt our responsibilities and obligations, but we can carve out time for rest, for family time, for cultivating that bubble of comfort we typically refer to as home. Another commandment instructs us to honor our parents, which I see as a broader category of honoring our families, with our time, our effort, our love, and respect. For when we take away the work, we need to be proud of what we have cultivated outside of that boundary. We need to be proud of the shalom bayit we have created for ourselves when we go home at the end of the day.

In fact, the word shalom appears only three times in the entire book of Exodus—and all three times, it’s spoken by Yitro. He tells Moses lech l’shalom—go in peace. He asks about Moses’ peace when they reunite and asks whether or not he’s maintaining it. And he promises that if Moses delegates leadership, the people will return home b’shalom—in peace. Yitro teaches us that seeking our own peace is not selfish. When we create balance in our lives, the people around us benefit too.

As I have grown older and established for myself my own family unit, I don’t drive to my parents’ home on a whim anymore and thankfully I don’t have any coding projects to desperately ask my dad for help with. But I still find those pockets of time to be with family, to go back to my family’s home and sleep in the bed I’ve had since elementary school. To take that ski trip with my brother or that hiking trip with my in-laws. Because life is too short not to be intentional about time. Too short not to protect the relationships that bring us comfort and grounding. Yitro knew that. Moses learned it. And we are still learning it today. May we find the courage to set boundaries, the wisdom to seek balance, and the love to invest in the people who give us peace. And may that pursuit bring shalom—to our homes, our work, and our lives.