June was an unbelievably busy month. One piece of evidence of this was that every single Saturday was booked with either a family event or church event of some sort: church picnics, weddings, birthday parties, baby showers. That this is evidence for our busyness shows that our weekends are usually pretty mundane, and if I’m busy then it’s because I’m still working on the sermon for Sunday!
July might well be similar. Along with the fact that my wife is one of our DVBS teachers (which means busy prep this week and busy days next week for her and additional child care for me), we have a couple of church families dealing with serious illness. As difficult as it is to imagine perhaps, there’s a part of me that gets a little tense and whispers a prayer each time the phone rings because it could be someone telling me that a loved one has died.
After DVBS we begin three weeks of vacation, time-off which will involve spending time with family, going tenting, hanging out at my in-laws camp, and, hopefully, getting some relaxing reading done. Of course, given the phone calls I await, our vacation could find itself edited in one way or another—that’s part of what it means to be a pastor.
Once we’re back from vacation, we have just a few weeks before the fall arrives. Strange as it sounds, it sometimes feels like the summer is already over! All our time is essentially spoken for. A time of year that used to stretch into forever now disappears, or so it seems, before you get the chance to enjoy the concept of unscheduled days.
I remember when I was a kid, summer seemed endless. Granted, sometimes I found myself impossibly bored. But there was a part of me that relished that feeling of having days and days of simple relaxing, reading, and a whole lot of nothing to do. It really gave me the sense that there was a definite change involved in the shifting of season besides those due to weather. I experienced time differently. Life wasn’t in as much of a rush as it might normally be.
Without waxing nostalgic too much, a part of me misses that experience. I recall when I could spend hours reading through a stack of deliberately chosen books (admittedly, not everyone’s choice of summer activity). I still have lots of books I would love to pour over thoughtfully, enjoyably, even prayerfully, but rarely do I have time to get to most of them. I miss having more leisurely time.
True, I do get some time like this. But with a family, time alone is a special gift. And with a vocation that could potentially even interrupt vacation time, it can be even harder. A consequence of this is that it can be hard to get that to place of being able to rest even when you are on vacation. Your body might be on vacation, but your mind is a hive of activity, a bundle of thoughts that prevent genuine Sabbath. There is more than one way of being still. Even if I’m physically still, being spiritually and mentally still is a whole other matter. I hope that while I’m on vacation with my family I find myself able to be still in both ways. While I might not have any more endless summers, hopefully I can catch snatches of summer here and there. Like anyone else, I sure could use it.
