Gone Fishin’
This might be a shorter blog as I'm writing ahead of time, and a little bit hurriedly because early Monday morning we'll be leaving for a week of hanging out with Jenelle’s family in Wisconsin. When you read this, I will probably be somewhere on the road or hopefully tossing a lure into some fish infested waters. I'm not sure that I'll actually catch anything but a family getaway is always a good thing, especially when the destination is somewhere close to water. Where there's water, there's usually fish.
When you're on vacation, that added pressure of feeling like you need to work goes away, and so you can fish until you get bored, or at least that's what I like to do. I'm not there to get away as much as I'm there to enjoy life and get recharged.
I heard a guy talking on the radio the other morning about how he took his family backpacking in the Grand Canyon and how peaceful it felt, having no phone or email access to his busy and stressful business life, and that we needed to find more ways like that to escape.
It reminded me of our family canoe trip that we took to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in 2019. It was a stressful time for me with a lot going on at work and I felt like I needed to be there. I was also on the leadership team at our little church. It wasn't anything bad, just a lot of the normal decisions that needed to be made and I was feeling like I needed a break, but also feeling bad for going off of the grid for more than a week.
Anyways, I remember how good it felt to be out there with Jenelle and the kids, no emails or texts, just the breeze and the water and the elements. I especially remember one moment where we had finished breakfast and Jenelle and the kids were playing cards and I was laying in the hammock, not sleeping, but totally resting and relaxing and feeling recharged. I remember wishing that that moment would last forever. And I remember how, when we came back to the real world, not much had changed. Somehow, God kept everything turning without my help.
I do agree with the radio guy, at least somewhat, that we need those wilderness areas to escape to, and that vacations and rest truly are important. But something bigger that I learned on our vacation was the recognition that when we are off of the grid, life and everything keeps moving. We're not as in control of things as we like to think that we are.
And so getting away isn't a cure-all. I was talking to a friend yesterday. His wife has been dealing with lots of sickness and health issues for a while now, and they just received a prognosis that doesn't look optimistic at all. That's something that you could probably walk a thousand miles into the deepest wilderness and never get away from. Finding rest and peace in those situations has to be nearly impossible. But for so many people that search is real.
I've never had anything in my life that was anywhere close to being as gut-wrenching as losing a spouse, so forgive me if I'm speaking out of turn. What I've learned though, is this little truth that helps me through hard times more than anything else. Jesus said, “come unto me and I will give you rest”. It's hard to know what “come unto me” even means. For me, it's simply taking a little pause in my day, just a short time of recognizing how little and weak I am, and how great God is. And I say it. Not necessarily out loud, but in my heart. “Jesus, it's all yours.”
Recognizing that he has an eternal plan for me that is good, gives me all the hope I need.
It might not make sense to you, and I wish that I could help you figure it out. But we're going on vacation, so you’ll need to go to Jesus.
After all, he's the one that said it in the first place!
