relaxation
Thanksgiving season has swiftly rushed past and we are now in the throes of Christmas shopping, decorating and baking. This time of year is reserved for reflection on days past, warm memories of those people and places of long ago, and a building of hope that the next calendar will turn over and see a bright New Year. We hear ring-a-linging bells on every corner as the Salvation Army Santa greets us, we watch as first one home then another in our neighborhoods throws light on the season with their various reindeer and sleighs, snowflakes and elves dancing along the fronts of glistening abodes and slippery sidewalks. Ah, Christmas…the time we should sit back and rest and really enjoy.
But do we? Many are working more hours now than ever before as the crush of the current economy has forced more people to find second and even third jobs. Masses of layoffs, closings and cutbacks have depressed the checkbooks along with the spirits of the working class. While embracing the real reason for the season, unfortunately love and contentment is buried in an avalanche of anxiety.
As much as we would like to see this way of life change, it seemingly is with us. Once a tide has turned it is so difficult to turn it back to simpler times, simpler truths and beliefs…not impossible…just more difficult.
As I was working from home today, I thought about how fortunate I am to do so when so many have to gird their loins and go out into the cruel world each day. I noticed too, and have been keenly aware of how “rushed” I will be and have been making a concerted effort for several months to slooooow doooowwwwwn. Not easy for this type A firstborn…but nothing worth doing is easy, right?
Many years ago I taught on this very subject in a women’s Bible Study I was leading at the time. I was encouraging us all in my teaching to take the time to enjoy the life the Lord has given us by eliminating some things from our lives that were a hindrance to true contentment and enjoyment. Several of the ladies were sharing how they didn’t “have time” to go to lunch or dinner with a friend anymore, or read a book, watch a favorite TV show, or sit on their back porch and eat an apple and listen to the birds sing and watch the squirrels run up and down the trees. Some were working more than one job, had small toddlers at home, an ailing parent or any of a number of various demands on their time. I took the opportunity to teach on “minute vacations”. So many times we are such perfectionists in our lives. We don’t do something until we can do it perfectly, and it ultimately never gets done. We don’t start a fun project because we can’t carve out an entire day to work on it, and we throw up our hands and say ” I will get to it, and my own time of enjoyment later”…and later never comes. Years pass, interest lags…and we never have anything to show for our lives but work, bed, eat, sleep a little and start over again.
How would your life change if you took more “minute vacations”? Drink a cup of hot cocoa and sit on the back porch…read 1 chapter, and only 1 chapter of your book each day…write one stanza of a poem or song…read the funny papers…feed the birds…take a walk around the block…practice the art of Simpli-F-Y.
Simpli-F-Y is anything you do Simply For You.
I recently returned from my annual trip to the beach in Gulf Shores, Alabama. The weather was beautiful the full ten days, and rest and relaxation was the storyline. Good times with friends, much time for reflection alone, reading on my Kindle…all made for a perfect trip. Plans to go on this trip were made far ahead of time, deposits paid, my directives for staff in readiness and I was so looking forward to this trip. Then the news of an impending hurricane…Isaac…threatened to thwart all my wonderful plans.
The week before my departure, it was looking more and more like I may have to cancel my trip. I was watching a friend’s Facebook page. He lived right in the area where I was to stay, and the pictures he was posting looked fierce. When I expressed my concerns about cancelling my trip he assured me “Don’t worry, by the time you come next week you won’t even know the storm has blown through here.”
So after thinking about it for a few days, I decided to take my chances and not cancel my trip. I was hoping for the situation to change exactly as he said it would. And it was the right decision. The storm hooked, moved past the area, the bit of messiness was cleaned up in record time and I arrived to find a beautiful white sandy beach and all things in their rightful, safe places as I always had in the past.
On a particular day during my visit I was sitting quietly watching the children play and the pelicans swoop down for fish. I thought back to the wisdom of my friend’s advice and how it relates to life in general. I also thought how the beach is a beautiful example of the ever-changing life we are called to lead. I also thought back a bit further…
In high school,as an aspiring Journalist, it was quite natural that I would choose Creative Writing as one of my electives in my senior year. That year our class self-published a book full of some of the best of the literary works written by its students. The following work was chosen to grace the cover of the book. As I sat on the beach that day, I thought back to the words of this poem:
The secrets of the earth are written in the sand.
Each grain a different story, for those who understand.
The author is the ocean who left her book on shore.
Her waters hold the copyright, and now…just as before
The sea keeps on writing and her waves keep on churning,
And even now as we speak, another page is turning…
I pondered the meaning here and the words of my friend from the week before and how it related to my life at that very moment. So many of us are given a book of life, so to speak. It is full of pages of memories and moments…some laughter, some tears, some good times and some not so good, but they are all a vital part of our own book. Sometimes we have a book that others convincingly perceive as so perfect, that even we begin to think it is perfect and indestructible. Then a storm brews, the clouds lay low in the sky, the wind picks up and before we know it the tempest has become a full-fledged hurricane leaving debris and wreckage in its wake, and perhaps taking away buildings, a pier, the white purity of the sand and replacing it with seaweed and blackened piles of wood and mess. It is as if the book of our own life that was so beautiful one moment had pages ripped from it, and the remains were tossed on shore like flotsam, and forgotten.
We may deal with many things in our own book of life….the loss of a job, death of spouse, divorce, cancer or other illness, betrayal of a friend. We may feel as if our perfect life at that moment had an unrelenting storm blow through, crushing us, ripping a page from our life…and we find ourselves wondering if our book of life will ever be normal and whole again. Many end up turning to outer means to salve the inside heartbrokeness. They look for the missing pieces in another person, frenetic activity, a bottle of pills, or a martini glass. And they realize no matter how many things come into our life on the outside to cover over the sadness, the page will still be missing…but… it’s ok to have a missing page. It doesn’t mean you no longer have a book…
How many times do you keep going back to that same spot in your own book, looking for the missing page, and ignoring all your other beautiful and joyful pages in the process? How many of the other pages appear pristine and look as if no one has ever visited them? Shouldn’t they be lovingly dogeared, thin from where you have handled them, reading and re-reading the wonderful parts of your life, and remembering? Isn’t your life to be like the sea…getting written over and over each day with new stories, new experiences, new opportunities to cover up and
wash away the harshness that is the missing page?
Perhaps the secret…is in the sand…