A Summer of Growth at Home

After several days of relative conflict my wife and I came to a peaceful resolution today: we're staying home this summer.

We had big dreams of travelling to the east and west coasts again, as we did last year when we vacationed in Seattle (with an excursion to Victoria, BC) and New York. This year we hoped to enjoy Boston and the Northeast and also to attend a spiritual growth seminar in Los Angeles. We were both excited about the basics of the plan. The conflict arose when I came up with the, apparently, "less than brilliant" idea to drive back east and drive to LA too. Well, Tinka didn't think too much of that idea...at the present time. And, true, it could take us away from our business here for too long a time.

Truth be told, I wasn't very excited about going on a trip at all and I felt, especially since Christopher are becoming such proficient Scouting campers, that we could keep the costs way down by driving prudently in our Prius and camping along the way. Now certainly that was at least a supremely reasonable if not brilliant idea! Tinka took exception. When we flew to Treasure Island in the spring we stayed a lovely condo in Land's End and had a very comfortable and relaxing time: soft bed, ready shower and air conditioning being key elements of "comfortable" and "relaxing."

Well, I prayed for wisdom for our vacation plans and immediately she was struck with the idea for drawing lots. She wrote on three pieces of paper: "fly," "drive," and "no go." Wouldn't you know it, I drew "drive." At first she began to resign herself to the driving idea and planning went on, but the more she thought about it the more rebellious she became to the idea--exacerbated by the fact that since I took the drawing as God's will I was entirely settled on the matter and convinced that, since "no go" was not drawn but was an option, we must drive to the east coast.

Resistance and rebellion grew as the realities of eight days of driving and the opportunity cost involved in being away from home for nearly 3 weeks set in. We took a Memorial Day trip to Arkansas to visit our favorite aunt and uncle, Brenda and Paul, as well as my dad, brother, sister and their dear ones. Overall the trip went well, lovely hospitality at P&B’s, dad’s, Tiffany’s and Becky’s, outstanding fishing and dad funded hotel stay, dinner on Mt Magazine, the highest point in Arkansas…but the way home foretold potential misery as I was, unfortunately, stubborn about a few things and took a route that added two hours to the return trip, though it was beautiful.

God removed the tension as he allowed me to see that perhaps he wanted us to drive on a smaller, couple day vacation and spend the rest of the summer at home working on growing in important areas: spiritually, intellectually, financially, in family, in character and in physical fitness. And so that is what we have decided to do, led by God, and we are at peace.