Life During and After Vacation . . .

It's September, the autumn is here, and it's time for life after vacation. In the few weeks before going on vacation I was so eagerly anticipating having some time off and away that it's hard to believe it's now all over. Now it's back to a regular fall schedule. I've felt both anxious and excited about getting back. It's time to begin Sunday School, Bible study, baptismal classes, etc. As a pastor, even Christmas isn't that far away in September!

But before I go any further . . . our vacation--which, by the way, was the first real one for us in a couple of years--was fantastic! In fact, it was the first real family road trip that we've taken since Ella was born nearly two years ago. We did the Cabot Trail (a first for all of us!), tented, cooked on an open fire (or portable BBQ once my brother in law and his wife arrived to meet us!), rested, hiked, read, played, and paid attention to some details that only a toddler such as our daughter would notice--like ants, pine cones, caterpillars, and slugs. So this is how we spent week one: travelling in Cape Breton. What an incredibly beautiful place it is! We probably overspent our budget a little bit with this time away, but it was still worth it!

The second week of our vacation was simpler and quieter and involved much less movement. We went to a Christian Camp and stayed at a great facility called the Pastor's Place, an apartment-style accommodation for, you guessed it, pastors or pastors and their families. The purpose of the facility is to offer a place for pastors who need to get away for any number of reasons, and for pastoral families who need a place to get away. I don't know that it's typically used for vacations per se, but we could only afford so much travelling in other provinces and this facility is free of charge for ministry families. In fact, we had this place booked long before we decided to go to Cape Breton. Needless to say, while quite different from our first week of vacation, it was still very nice. It was much more like a retreat, a time for us to be family without all the noise of normal life. It was great especially to have more time with my little girl than I normally would. I think I can actually say that we got closer over these two weeks. Yes, vacations are a wonderful thing.

But now we're back. And amazingly life has gone on without us. But isn't that a basic principle of rest and Sabbath, God teaching us that life does not depend on us but Him? It's like when we go to bed at night--we can almost say that this is when the day begins, because it begins with what God is doing long before we arrive on the scene in the morning with our agendas, schedules, distractions, and busyness. Learning to cultivate this sense of restfulness even when working--to have not only a Sabbath day but a Sabbath heart--is really the most difficult thing to do. I felt that anxious urgency in my gut in getting back to work at the church this week, that sense that I need to be or at least appear to be as busy as possible because vacation is now over. It's like I have to earn guiltily the privilege of having had a vacation. Of course, the funny thing is that the pace of life here is not that overly rushed compared to anyone in an urban or even suburban setting--but sometimes our hearts try and keep a pace that is out of step with our surroundings. I know that I am finding it difficult to understand and practice that idea of Sabbath. My prayer is that the Lord will really enable me to have a restful, available spirit even in the midst of all the activity. I can't lazily nap my afternoons away as I did while on vacation, but hopefully I can still carry with me that sense that God is working ahead of me and because of that I can be restful and that I need not be anxious.