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