Time to Rest

Dale and I love to travel, and we’ve been blessed to do a lot of it since we got married. We’ve taken trips to Europe, South Africa, Central America, the Caribbean, Australia, and more, and we’ve discovered an amazing tapestry of God’s beautiful world and the cultures of times past and present. Most of our trips are filled with a busy schedule of tours and trying to glean all we can from our time in these wonderful places.

Last week we traveled to Mexico simply to rest, relax, and reconnect. We needed to get away from the busyness of writing my books, and of all the demands of this year thus far. I didn’t even take my computer with me, and that was wise.

It’s always amazing how easy it is to let the busyness of life fill your days and weeks and months—until you long for time alone, for time apart, for time to relax together. So that’s what we did.

We talked. We walked on the beach. We laughed over dinner. We rested, and we found such joy in simply relaxing—and not feeling guilty.

True confessions. Dale and I have one, major besetting sin—we tend to be workaholics. We feel guilty when we rest. We have trouble sitting still. We have an inordinate need to be busy, busy, busy.

And the Sabbath Rest? Argh! We try. We fail. We try again. And we know that this will probably be our ongoing pattern until the day we die. Yet I know I must heed the old adage that I taught my kids, “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again.” So we try and I think, succeeded a little…on the beaches of Puerto Vallarta.

How about you? Is resting and relaxing hard for you? Why or why not? I’d love to know.