Bringing Vacation Home

We’ve just returned from vacation- a sweet lakeside retreat where we had nothing to do but enjoy one another and dip our dangling toes into warm blue waters. Nothing to do but fish and swim, splash and play 


When the lake melted into moonlit darkness, we hauled out the board games and books and turned a blind eye to the clock.  We said “yes” to yard games and lounge chairs on the porch and “no” to agendas, plans, telephones, and pagers. 


The freedom was intoxicating. The solitude healing. The spontaneity refreshing.  The lines of my blessings were clear and distinct, not blurred by rushing and racing. My children felt like gifts sent straight from the hand of God to spark laughter and wonder, joy and restoration.


Then we came home. We rushed to pick up school schedules and class lists, ran to the hospital to x-ray a child’s wrist bruised and swollen from a bicycle crash, dashed through the grocery store to restock empty cupboards, and returned phone calls waiting behind the answering machine’s impatient blinking light. My gifts overwhelmed me. Their clamoring and needing and crying left me frazzled and undone. And I prayed for patience. 


How does one carry a rested soul into “real life?” How does a mom savor her children in the midst of clanging telephones and beeping text messages, overflowing in-boxes and color-coded calendar boxes? How does she keep her eyes attuned to Majesty in the midst of the mundane? How does she number her days aright when her hours are abuzz? 


In his stunning book, The Rest of God, Mark Buchanan writes, “Unless we receive time as abundance and gift, not as ration and burden, we’ll never develop a capacity to savor Sabbath.” Or life, for that matter. 


Today, my feet won’t be dipping in lazy waters, but I want to plant my toes on the Rock and thank Him for the gift of this day whatever it brings. I want to look beyond the blur of the hours and minutes that comprise this day and see the abundance of His grace in all of this– the Band Aids, the crying, the laundry folding, the backyard-baseball-playing, and the chauffeuring. 


I want to- in Buchanan’s words- “Pay attention  to how God is afoot in the mystery of each moment, in its mad rush or maddening plod.”   

Perhaps that is the key to bringing vacation home with me. Maybe that is the solution to a rested soul even in the midst of a frenzied life… paying attention to God in the moment. Numbering my days by counting on His presence. 


May you see Him afoot in the weekend to come!


The Overflow:  “Teach me to number my days aright that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”
 -Psalm 90:12