Our fall family vacation ended three days ago, and I know this because I am 8 pounds (seriously, 8 pounds!) heavier, and it was really hard to get up early this morning. It was a really great week, and we were so thankful for the time to get away. There is a common refrain that we ask people when they return from vacation that I heard often yesterday. One that expresses both love and concern, and genuine interest in my well-being: “was your vacation restful?”
That got me thinking about the concept of rest. Honestly, I can’t say that the whole vacation was restful in the way that I think many people mean. For me, every vacation has seasons to it. Some of those seasons are restful, some are me simply coming to bear with the stress of the life we live. My seasons of vacation typically go like this:
1. Wind up – for about two weeks before we leave for vacation, we are frantically planning ahead, arranging schedules and subs for all the ministries we (both my wife and I) are a part of, writing the lessons and sermons for when we get back from vacation, getting in all the different meetings and visits we will miss over the week, and arranging care for our various and sundry animals. If we didn’t need a vacation before the time we spent preparing for vacation, we certainly need it by the time we are ready to leave.
2. Unwind – for the next two days, I have found that I am off loading, bit by bit, the stress that has built up for the past year PLUS the stress of the wind-up. I’m coming to bear with the strain that our work has had on our family, on my emotional health, and on my perspective about life. I normally start a book here that helps me unpack all the things that I have suppressed over the course of the year. This year, it was Lies Pastors Believe: Seven Ways to Elevate Yourself, Subvert the Gospel, and Undermine the Church by Dayton Hartman (which is a really great book, by the way). I choose a book that I feel will speak to some area that needs particular growth, and then I let that book serve as a supplement to serious and intense study in a book of the Bible (this year, it was Galatians). By the end of day two or the beginning of day three, I can normally feel myself relaxing.
3. Vacation! – though all of the week is vacation, the middle three days are usually the three days I feel like I am actually on vacation. Sunday has come and gone, we are doing family things together, and we normally have a couple of days in there where neither of us talk about church life, or children’s ministry, or problems. We just enjoy life together as a family. These three days are the most important in our vacation, because they are the payoff to the wind up and unwind phases.
4. Looking ahead – the last two days of vacation, I start thinking about coming back and what will need to be done in order to catch up on what didn’t get done. I am aware that I shouldn’t do that. I am also aware that it is potentially unhealthy. I wish I could change, and I am working to that end. In the meantime, this is the most stressful part of vacation for us. I have to remind myself that what I am feeling is most often feeling, not fact. My perception of life is skewed by the rest and relaxation, along with our natural tendencies to find identity in rest. There is usually an emotional crisis day in here, in which I allow myself a day just to come to grips with the difficult nature of the work. Sometimes, it’s just a pity party. Other times, it’s real, dark, painful depression. I am learning, by God’s grace, that this is a really important day for me, however. We need sad and overwhelmed sometimes. God gave us a range of emotions, not just the emotion of happy, and these two days of realization of how difficult life and work are have proven to be useful tools in the process of rest for us.
5. Heading back – the last day, we say our goodbyes to vacation. Our son is old enough now that he realizes it’s over, and he is learning to lament going back to our normal, abnormal, busy, stressful life as well. We let him do that, and then we celebrate our vacation and the time we had together. This year, he said a tearful goodbye to every single attraction on the way out of town. My family rested on the way back while I drove, and with the mountains in the background, I quietly said my goodbyes to our vacation, and then started to think and pray. I reminded myself of what a great privilege it is to be a pastor. I reminded myself that this is supposed to be hard work, I am supposed to get tired, and that, even though the following week will likely be just as crazy as the week prior to vacation, I love our life (mostly; sometimes I really don’t). We get back in, put our luggage in the living room, and start the process of getting back to life in ministry.
Whether or not this is a healthy way to vacation, I’m not sure. I can tell you that there is some time spent worrying, some time spent borrowing trouble, and thinking about tomorrow today. There are times when I let myself get down into a little emotional pit, when the cares of this life are really heavy. There are times when I lament our abnormal life. But I think in order to live this life, you almost have to have those moments. It’s what you DO with them that matters most, I think. When we feel those things, then run to biblical truth, I am learning that the God of all comfort meets us in those afflictions with grace that we can bring to bear in others lives.
Maybe this is how you vacation, too. Maybe you haven’t vacationed well in a long time. I think there is a rhythm to it, but I don’t think it has to be my rhythm. I do know that you can’t fail to be strategic about rest and expect there to actually be rest. In an almost ironic fashion, I think there is a truth that resounds as we think about vacation:
Really resting takes a lot of work.
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