How To Vacation

I received a text message this morning from a friend asking if I was ready for a vacation. I reply back, “No, I am glad to be back to the routine. We have figured out how to vacation.”

How many vacations have all of us taken and didn’t want to miss out on anything and wanted to make sure we got our “monies worth”. We schedule and plan and rush form one activity to the next. Setting the alarm each night to meet a schedule on vacations seems to be wrong on so many levels. We come back from our time away exhausted.

Last week my husband and I took our annual “vacation”. He has a limited number of vacation days and we tend to do a couple of weekend getaways each year, but we purpose to take a vacation each year. A vacation to us is about spending time together while getting refreshed and restored.

Now don’t get me wrong we still take what we call “working vacations” where we go with a purpose and a project to be completed. But these are becoming less frequent. Is that age or wisdom?

So how do we vacation? We stumbled on this formula by accident, but it has served us very well the last few years. We decide what part of the country we would like to explore, usually around something from the Civil War because that is one of Kyle’s passions. (Side bar – for all of you home schoolers, if you want someone to speak about the Civil War, I know this guy). We get a rental car, guide book and a map and we take off. Our only schedule for the entire vacation is when to be at the airport to leave and to return. Everything in between is left up in the air and we decide as we go. We don’t use a GPS because we might miss something and I am pretty good with a map. We don’t pre-book hotels, we just decide we are ready for the night and find one that looks good preferring one that has a hot tub/spa.

By doing this we take the structure out of our way too over scheduled lives for a few days. We spend quality time without distractions while in the car driving. We get as much rest as we want for a change sleeping in, going to bed early, and relaxing when we just want to relax.

Vacation - leisure time away from work devoted to rest or pleasure.

MATT 11:28-30

Travel Companions

An elderly woman being accompanied by her daughter who is just a younger version of the first are sitting towards the front. There is the family traveling with 3 small children. A couple of young mothers one whose child sleeps quietly the others does not want to sit in one place. A college student is busy reading a text book while the business man is sleeping while the movie playing goes unwatched.

We all sit on the same airplane headed to the same destination, at least on this flight. We all get on for different reasons, some visiting family, some returning home, so going on vacation, all different reasons but a common destination.

As I sit and work on my laptop while my husband naps next to me I think about how being on this airplane is a small version of life. At different stages or “legs” of our travel we are doing life together. We spend time with people and then for various reasons we lose contact with people that we were once close to. Our travel companions though life will change, but we must chose to travel with the right people and along the right path.

After 3+hours we arrive at our destination and all of us get off of the plane. Some are done and will return to their homes, some will rush off to catch another flight, some like us are just moving onto a different mode of transportation to continue our trip.

Proverbs 13:20