I wake up without an alarm, which means I wake up confused.

There's a long moment where I lie there, heart racing, convinced I've overslept something catastrophic—the shop, a delivery, some appointment I've forgotten—before I remember: Sunday. Shop's closed. Evening service tonight instead of morning.

Jennifer had texted last night: Pastor Coleman's doing the marriage retreat talk at 10:30, evening service at 6 if you want to skip the married people feelings. I'd typed back bless you and meant it literally.

So. Nowhere to be until six.

The ceiling stares back at me. I stare at it.

Now what?

Mabel is a warm weight at my feet, unbothered by my existential confusion. She's got this figured out. She's been resting professionally her entire life. I, apparently, have not.

I get up anyway, because lying still when you're awake feels like losing, and that's probably something I should examine at some point but not today. The apartment is quiet in that particular Sunday way—the street outside muffled, the shop below silent, even St. Francis across the way looking drowsy behind its sign.

I make coffee.

Not the efficient, muscle-memory coffee of a workday. Not the "fourteen people are waiting and Betsy is making whale sounds" coffee. This is different. I pull out the pour-over setup I almost never use because it takes too long, because there's always something else, because slowing down feels like a luxury I haven't earned.

Costa Rican. Light roast. Bright and clean with honey notes—spring in a cup, even though March in the Midwest can't quite decide what it wants to be yet.

I boil the water. Grind the beans. The smell fills the apartment, and for once I actually notice it instead of registering it as background noise to whatever I'm rushing toward.

The pour is slow. Circular. The grounds bloom, and I watch them, and I'm not thinking about inventory or schedules or whether I remembered to order more oat milk.

I'm just... here.

The cozy chair accepts me the way it always does—like it was waiting, like this is what it was made for. Linda sent this chair. I think about that sometimes. How she couldn't say "I love you" or "I'm proud of you" or "I understand," but she could send a chair that holds me exactly right. How love finds the doors it can fit through.

Mabel appears from wherever Mabel goes when she's not supervising me. She considers the situation. Calculates. Jumps.

Her weight settles across my thighs, and she begins the lengthy process of kneading my sweatpants into acceptable terrain, which involves claws and discomfort and somehow still feels like being chosen.

I sip my coffee. She purrs. The light through the window is doing that thing where it moves across the wall so slowly you can't see it happening, but if you look away and look back, it's somewhere else entirely.

This is nice.

This is... really nice.

And then my brain, helpful as always, says: Shouldn't you be doing something?

The to-do list materializes unbidden. Inventory check. Deep clean the espresso portafilters. Update the social media you never update. Email that supplier back. Reorganize the storage room. Work on next week. Plan further ahead. Produce something. Earn this stillness by—

"We're not doing that today."

I say it out loud. To the cat.

Mabel opens one eye, blinks slowly, and closes it again.

I choose to interpret this as agreement.

The restlessness doesn't disappear. It's still there, that low hum that says sitting still is wasting time, resting is for people who've finished, you haven't finished, you'll never finish, there's always more—

But I don't get up.

I stay in the chair. I drink my coffee. I let Mabel's purring be louder than the hum.

I think about rest. About how I grew up believing it was something you earned after the work was done—which meant never, because the work was never done, because there was always another way you could be better, try harder, prove you deserved the air you were breathing. Sundays weren't rest days; they were performance days. Three services. Dinner on the grounds. Smile right, sit still, be good enough to justify the week.

I think about how rest might not be a reward. How it might be a rhythm. Something you practice, not something you earn. How God rested on the seventh day not because He was tired, but because rest was part of the design. Built in. Commanded.

Beside still waters.

The words surface from somewhere old. Somewhere before the fear got attached to everything.

He restores my soul.

Not after I've earned it. Not once I've done enough. Just... restores. Present tense. Ongoing. Here, in a chair, on a Sunday, with a cat and a cup of coffee and hours until I need to be anywhere.

The light has moved again. An hour, maybe. I don't check.

I haven't produced anything. I haven't crossed anything off. I haven't earned this morning through sufficient hustle.

I just... was.

Mabel shifts, resettles, claims more of my lap. The coffee's gone cold in my hands, but I don't get up to make more. Outside, a bird is doing something complicated on the fire escape. St. Francis's sign says SERVICE AT 10:30 like it does every Sunday, steady and unbothered.

I close my eyes.

I'm learning that contentment isn't something you arrive at. It's something you practice, badly, over and over, until one Sunday morning you realize you've been sitting still for an hour and the world didn't end and nothing fell apart and you're okay.

You're actually okay.

Mabel purrs.

The light moves.

I stay.