Friday, June 28, 2013

On Vacation - Plans, Decisions, Goals

As of this morning I am on vacation! This is the longest vacation I've taken - a full month from June 28 until July 28.

Vacation Plans
This year for vacation we are spending time with Sharalyn's family at the annual MacDonald Family retreat; we are heading to both Camp Peniel and Mt. Traber Bible Camp as a family for a week each [I'm the speaker, several of our kids are campers], and we are spending about 10 days at home with no plans until each morning when we wake up. For me, spontaneous is a bit of a stretch from my normal life, but it is a part of vacation. [Planned spontaneity is about as close as I come to being laid back!]

Vacation Decisions
I'm not always [ever?] good at turning off my working mind when I'm on vacation. Summer in ministry at church is a time when so much is going on, it can be hard for me to disengage.  I've made a few decisions to help, you [yeah, everyone] can hold me accountable to them.

  • Sharalyn and I have turned off wifi and cellular data on our iphones.  This means that for the month of vacation, our phones can not pickup email, facebook, twitter, etc. It also means a few disadvantages like no Google Maps, but that's a trade off.
  • I will check email only once a day. I know, it seems like never would be better, but lets face it - there's a lot going on with VBC, Tidal Impact, Oasis Kids, and children / youth ministry at NMBC and being completely out of touch isn't really realistic. I will check email each day after we put our kids into bed each night and will only send new emails that I absolutely have to send, and only reply to things which are urgent.
Vacation Goals
Taking a vacation for some people means choosing to take a break from goals - you all know me, I'm too much of a structure person for that.  Here are the goals I have for the next month, in no particular order.
  • Four weeks = four books. I have four books that I want to read, one is fiction, one is about parenting, and two are about living out my faith in Jesus. I may blog about them as I finish them, but I'm not sure yet. Week one has to be fiction, need to change how my mind works for a little while.
  • Four weeks = four books of the Bible. Each week I have a different book of the Bible I intend to read through and savor. Although my choices could change, at the moment they are: Ecclesiastes, Jonah, 1 Timothy, 1 Peter.
  • Sleeping. It's sort of funny to list this as a goal, but the reality is that I'm not good at it.  I seldom sleep more than 6 hours in a row, and rarely more than 7. My goal is to be in bed by 10pm almost every night and up by 6am almost every morning. 
  • Walking. I'm not a person who gets enough exercise.  My goal for vacation is to go for a 30 minute walk almost every day.
  • Conversation. There are 7 children in our family.  Some parents who have less children can have individual / deep conversations with each of their children every day.  The reality is that in our non-vacation life, this just doesn't happen.  We spend a lot of family time together, but individual time isn't always in abundance.  My goal is to have [at minimum] 30 minutes one-on-one time with a different child each day - one day per child each week of vacation.
  • Electronics Fast. I'm a technology enthusiast [my wife might say addict]. In some part its related to my work, in other parts, it's a hobby, sometimes perhaps Sharalyn might be right.  For vacation, I am taking a semi-fast from technology.  Other than once-a-day email and facebook messages to stay in touch with the urgent, I will not be posting online, or using other forms of technology [video games, Netflix  television, movies] very often. Rainy days might be an exception. As a part of this fast, the four books I intend to read are paper books [What?!] instead of Kindle books.
There you have it. I'm sure other plans will happen, I'm certain that I will falter in my decisions occasionally, and I may not achieve all of my goals. However, in some strange way, by posting them here on my blog, I feel somewhat accountable for them. At the end of my vacation I'll post an update about how it all went. 

Pray for me and for my family; it's been a long season in ministry, school and family life for us all, and we are all drained in different ways. Vacation is a great time to recharge our energy, our relationships and our spiritual lives. Pray that God will help us in each of those areas.