Does this sound as impossible to you as it does to me? Where does the time go? This has been a different sort of summer for us.
It seems like more of our friends are having visitors and visiting others than in years past. I think it is partly due to the economy, since it is far less expensive when you visit someone and don’t have hotel expenses and costly meals out, and having friends visit is always fun. Often times we do things with visitors that we have never considered doing alone, or just haven’t taken time to do.
We used to live 10 minutes from Mall of America and only went there when we had guests who wanted to see it. Of course we aren’t big shoppers, but just looking around was fun.
So far this summer we’ve done a number of things with guests that we haven’t managed to do since we moved here five years ago. We discovered that our little county museum has an amazing amount of information for such a small town. We learned things we never knew about the area. For instance, this area was one of the biggest bootleg liquor areas in the state. Our Minnesota Thirteen bootleg whiskey was famous during that era.
We’ve taken time to play games, watch old movies, look at photo albums, swim and sit on the dock – things that there just never seems to be enough time to do.
To me this has been one of the benefits of a tighter economy. When I look back I realize that my family only took one real vacation in all my growing up years, and that was to visit family in Canada. I marvel at how we have come to expect expensive vacation trips as a way of life and despair when we find we can’t do it. Or worse yet, charge it on a credit card and then pay a high percentage of interest for months until we can pay it off.
Are vacations necessary? Do we “deserve” them?
No. We can get along without vacations, and yes, we all work hard, but “deserve,” I don’t think so.
What we do need is time to relax, kick back, be refreshed, and we can do that at home as well as we could on a vacation. In fact, I’ve come home from some vacations when I felt like I needed a vacation to recover from my vacation.
One summer we decided to visit all the Minnesota Historical sites that we could get to and back from in a day. Since we did this over the space of a couple of months we were able to really enjoy them. Yes, there were days when we returned home tired, but then we could take several days to recover before planning our next outing. I’ve lived in Minnesota most of my life and had never visited most of the places we visited that summer. I’ll bet that the same is true of you and your state.
Another good idea is to send for tourism information on your state – just like you do when you go to a different state. Often you get discounts meant to lure vacationers, but residents are welcome to take advantage of them too.
If you or your spouse doesn’t get paid vacation time, another good way to regroup is to follow this command:
Exodus 20:8-11 (King James Version)
“Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.”
We tend to forget that the Lord made provision for us to be refreshed – weekly. I don’t mean that you should do nothing on Sundays, but there are probably a number of things, which if discontinued on Sundays would provide you more of a day of rest. We don’t turn on our computers until later in the afternoon – we know people who don’t use them at all on Sundays. Taking a break from our normal activities can be very refreshing. I know people who take naps on Sunday – in fact I used to be one of them.
Finding Joy in the Journey,
Phyllis
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Phyllis Sather
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3 Comments
Stacy
Phyllis, I just wanted to give you a heads up and let you know that I am linking to you in my Friday “weekly wrap up” post. I hope it will get you some more “traffic” at your website. 🙂
Phyllis
Hi Stacy,
I can’t believe all you manage to get done. You certainly are creative! Blessings on your new school year. Phyllis
Stacy
Phyllis, IKWYM about the time! Since I started working at the hospital nearly 15 months ago, I can’t believe how much faster the time seems to go!
Thankfully, we are still managing to homeschool. In fact, dd chose to officially start yesterday.
Since I work at a hospital, I often have to change my view of a “Sabbath.” Since I work weekends, sometimes my Sabbath is a weekday. Since the ER tends to be slow in the mornings on the weekends, I can also read my bible or do a bible study in between taking care of patients.