When Vacation Is More Than An Escape

Have you ever noticed the way most of us approach vacation?  We push through everyday life dreaming of the next escape we get that we call vacation.  It is our chance to escape life... to go to the mountains or beach to go on a cruise or tour Europe.  We live looking to these little pockets of time as our reprieve from the drudgery of life. 

Our family just returned from vacation.  Yesterday in fact.... We still have unpacking to do.  We still have laundry calling us and everyday life is starting to kick in once more.  My husband is working while I am doing the everyday tasks once more of running the littles and puppies to their respective appointments.  I found my way to my corner of Starbucks where I once more connected with the people I have come to know in this space that has begun to serve as my "unofficial office" over the past couple of years.  

This time the experience of vacation and the return to "normal" life has been markedly different for our family.  We all struggled to move this morning, but we still managed to get to our respective places in a timely and orderly fashion.  In fact, there was a feeling of contentment as we all resumed the rhythm of life that we had put to the side for the past 10 days.  Our newly turned 2 year old was super excited to resume her routine while our extroverted 3 1/2 year old was all ready to meet up with her friends and tell them all about her adventures on the beach.

The anticipation with which our entire family began to view our trip home as we neared the end of our vacation time this year has caused me to reflect.  What had changed?  Why was this vacation different?

As I thought about this I began to see that over the past few years my husband and I made the choice to pursue a more intentional lifestyle for our family.  We began to prioritize date nights, we began to make sure we made adventure a part of our everyday life.  We framed simple things like running errands as a family as adventures.  We slowed down and took the time to explore the things we were actually familiar with looking for the new and unexpected.  We slowed down to try to see the world around us through the eyes of our toddlers.  

So often as adults we become cynical.  We view the world through the jaded eyes of our "vast experience".  We perceive our children as lacking our understanding of the world when maybe the more accurate viewpoint is we lost our wonder at the world.

Don't get me wrong, I am all too aware that we live in a world where evil abounds, but sometimes our jaded eye sees everything through the lens of evil intent.  The eye of a toddler sees the world through the lens of wonder and adventure.  The little things like shells on the beach, the power of an ocean wave and the quirky nature of birds take on a completely different meaning when experienced in the context of a toddlers world view.

Jesus reminded his disciples in Matthew 18:3: "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."

What if the true gift of children to our world is their ability to see the world through this special lens? What if that lens is what Jesus was encouraging us to embrace?  What if in stopping and allowing ourselves to learn from the children in our lives we are moving closer to the kingdom of heaven that Jesus promises?

I feel like this family vacation showed me something interesting about myself... When I stop and allow my daughters to show me the world through their unique lens as children I see more than just nature differently.  I see that I cannot nor do I want to spend my life in vacation mode.  Vacation serves as a break, a reset of sorts.  It is greatly needed to sustain the normal rhythm that is life, but it is not intended to become the normal.  Everyday life is full of needed boundaries that give us purpose and move us forward toward goals.  Vacation becomes the opportunity to relax the boundaries to not hold so firmly to a schedule.  It provides a longer pause that allows us to breathe a little more deeply and slowly as we are freed from the demands of life for a brief period.  If we take vacations too often they lose their wonder as they become commonplace, but when they are inserted at just the right moment they create the perfect pause in the incredible symphony of our lives that God is creating.  

I find myself wondering as I move out of this vacation and back into the rhythm that is life if just maybe those rhythms and rests combined with the world lens of a child is what allows us to experience the kingdom of heaven on earth?  When I stopped to look at our return from vacation through the lens of my 2 year old I see that the everyday rhythm provides a much needed security.  There is a peace and calm that comes from embracing the familiar.  When I look at vacation through the lens of my 3 1/2 year old I see the throwing off of the everyday boundaries to embrace a period of wild, abandon adventures.  When I step back and combine those two lenses, I feel just a little closer to God.  I see His love in the peaceful familiar patterns we return to, but I also experienced His power and joy in the moments we were able to forsake the familiar and explore the unfamiliar with an abandon that isn't possible in the middle of the everyday rhythms of life.

Hope in the Journey

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future."

~Jeremiah 29:11

This verse found its way into my life the year I graduated high school.  It came in the form of a little picture frame.  I remember thinking at the time it was cute, but what would I ever do with it?  My style at the time was fussy and the more swirls and curls in a design the better.  This little frame was incredibly simple to the point of boring.  It read Journey across the top and contained the verse from Jeremiah across the bottom.  Somehow through numerous moves and multiple rounds of decluttering this little frame held on.  Every time I picked it up to put it in the discard pile it found its way back into the keep pile.  It is probably the only thing that I still have from that day.  

Honestly, while I've considered it a verse that has defined my life for a while, I have a love-hate relationship with it.  Sometimes I really struggle with believing that God really does have plans that include hope and a future.

There are moments my life feels much more like The Waiting Place from Dr Suess's Oh The Places You'll Go...

...for people just waiting.

Waiting for a train to go

or a bus to come or a plane to go

or the mail to come or the rain to go

or the phone to ring or the snow to snow

or waiting around for a Yes or No

or waiting for their hair to grow.

Everyone is just waiting.

When I'm in that waiting pattern, it is hard to believe that there could be some greater plan at work.

The waiting place doesn't "feel" very hopeful.

Then I'm reminded of that little picture frame that now sits in my living room holding a picture of my younger self surrounded by larger picture frames filled with photos of my little family of four.  This little frame holds a reminder in the single word arching across the top "Journey".

Journey

 1.  a traveling from one place to another, usually taking a rather long trip

2.  passage or progress from one stage to another

A journey requires waiting...

As Dr Seuss reminds us it can be...

"waiting for a train to go or a bus to come or a plane to go"

When my husband and I were dating we vacationed with his family in Florida.

His family had a practice of driving overnight only stopping for gas and maybe one breakfast.  

We agreed that we would take this approach...

We have not done this since! 

One of the things we realized about ourselves as a couple on that trip is that for the two of us the journey is what we enjoy.  The destination is great, but there is so much to enjoy between point A and point B.  

That trip we pushed ourselves so hard to get to the destination that when we got there we were irritable, overly tired and we spent a part of our first day there just catching up on sleep!

I'd like to say I totally get and apply the lesson to every area of my life from that point on, but sadly that is not always the case.  

I think it is so easy to get focused on where we feel called, the goal we have set for ourselves or the future and hope we imagine God has planned for us.  In an intense focus on making that destination happen we lose sight of the lessons on the journey.  

Lord of the Rings in probably the most epic example of a journey we have.  It would have been so easy for Tolkien to focus on merely the journey of Sam and Frodo to destroy the ring, but he doesn't focus solely on this one journey.  Instead he winds together the journeys of several characters all crucial to the ending of the story.  There are periods where these characters had to spend their time in "the waiting place" because of the role they were needed to play in the larger picture.  A role that was critical to the "hope and future" of MiddleEarth.  

It can be easy to think of these stories as just that stories, but stories serve to remind us that a journey is more than just a destination.  A journey is an opportunity for discovery.  A journey is organic and ever changing as people and circumstances come and go.  There is a good chance that most of us will not finish our journey with the same people who were there at its start.  Twenty years later I still remember the person who gave me that small picture frame.  I haven't seen them in nearly a decade.  That little frame over time has served as a reminder that God's idea of hope and future doesn't always look like the destination we think we are aiming toward.  On graduation twenty years ago, I had no idea that a few years later I would graduate from nursing school.  When I graduated from nursing school I had no idea that years later I would complete my bachelors degree in a completely different field.  That little frame with that little girl is surrounded by pictures of a husband and daughters I some days thought would never exist!  

All of that still doesn't stop me from trying to rush to the destination on occasion though!  Do you ever have those moments where you feel that the hope and the future God promises are really distant and seem invisible and highly unlikely to ever happen.  I'm completely convinced that the people Jeremiah was writing to in Babylon felt the exact same way!  Sometimes the waiting while all the details line up feels excruciating.  

You know what still happens on occasion to my husband and I when we take a trip?  

Inevitably we get excited and want to push through to the destination.  

It is in that moment we have to decide if we are going to let the eagerness for the destination override the pace of our journey.

That is sort of how life is....

When we are in "the waiting place" we can juggle the bus, train and plane to get out of that space sooner, but what do we lose in the process?  

What opportunities or relationships are sacrificed?

So if you are in a waiting place (like I am right now) take some time,

slow down, meet the people around you.

Stop trying to juggle the schedule to escape and embrace this part of the journey!