I have been told that when you go on vacation, it's really important to get out of town. And, for the most part, I have obeyed (though there was the time we went to Paris, came home and stayed holed up in our City, watching movies which featured Paris, and sneaking out for the occasional in-town excursion).
My husband loves to plan vacations. Even though Mesa Verde was my idea (a long-dreamt dream), he made all of the arrangements. As for me, as much as I love going places and seeing beautiful things, what really excites me at first is this:
time.
I always bring along more books than I can possibly read.
I bring paper and think I am going to write. (sometimes I do, sometimes I don't)
I bring knitting.
I actually had the recorder out, wondering if I should bring it along and spend a little time practicing. (I decided against it, at the last minute.)
Yesterday I took a really nice, un-planned nap. Wow!, was that good.
On vacations, I like to learn things (I discovered that on the StrengthsFinder inventory, I am a "Learner", so that is no surprise.) I think about things like learning the recorder, but actually, what I love is learning about a new place, like San Francisco, or Atlanta, or Paris, or Santa Fe.
The tricky thing for me is that while I am taking a vacation from work, I realize that I'm not taking a vacation from God. I think that this is one of the tricky things about being a sort of religious professional, at least it is for me: how to not make my work so close to my identity that I can't just worship God without thinking about it in terms of work. So, it's a growing edge sometimes to practice prayer and hear scripture without thinking about the next sermon.
so, there's time.
Time to read, knit, see in a different way, with different eyes. And time to pray.
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