For the last 15 years or
so, this weekend – just around the last weekend in January – has
been the one where Ellen and I headed off for our much-anticipated
winter getaway weekend at a nearby resort town. The town has a busy
summer season but both pace and prices reduce significantly in the
wintertime, and it's not far away so travel isn't a big issue. We
started this when all the kids were still at home but had gotten old
enough to leave, and the pace of parenting was nonstop. We started
heading off for just a weekend, but the time proved so therapeutic
that we started extending our stay until we were heading over for
five days.
It's hard to convey just
how much this time has meant to us. To have just a few days to
ourselves, without any time pressure, was like a renewal for us and
for our marriage. To be free from the relentless, 24/7,
always-on-call responsibility of parenthood was such a relief that we
took to calling the time “depressurization”. One of the reasons
we extended the weekend was that we found that it took a full day or
so after we got there just to slow down. We'd so look forward to
this that, at random times throughout the year (particularly if the
pressures were mounting), we'd look at each other and say “five”
or “nine” - that being the number of months until our getaway.
It never failed to elicit a smile and a rush of calm.
This year, though, we
weren't able to make it. We had to call and cancel our reservation.
The finances just wouldn't bear the cost. Now, it would be easy to
get all caught up in the disappointment of this, and mope about
grieving over what we might be doing if we'd been able to have our
winter getaway, etc. But there are a few things different this time.
One is that the pace of our ordinary life has slowed considerably.
All the kids are really, truly out of the house, so usually it's just
us living at a more sedate pace. Sure, we appreciate the chance for
a responsibility-free long weekend, but we hardly need
it in the same way we did ten years ago.
But
another thing happened during the Christmas season. My son and
daughter were on their way across our state in the wintry weather,
hit a slushy ramp, and rolled the car. Thankfully, they were both
securely strapped in and walked away with nothing worse than bumps
and scrapes, but the event was an ugly shock for us all, and
especially for my son who had to go through the hassle of replacing
his totaled car.
Obviously,
that's the sort of thing that makes you stop and think about what's
important in your life. Having your children came frighteningly
close to major injury or death sweeps the trivial things to the
fringes in a big hurry. We celebrated our “all-together”
Christmas – which was what they were coming for – with extra
appreciation for the fragility of life and the preciousness of loving
relationships. I've spent a lot of time being extra thankful to the
Lord for sparing our children.
I'm
not suggesting for a moment that I think there was some kind of
cosmic trade-off here, that somehow the “price” of our children's
protection was our foregoing our getaway weekend. That's not how God
works. What I am saying is that life-rattling events cause you to
step back from situations you're too close to and look at them in the
broader context. Sure, a decade and a half of special couple time is
a great record, and would be a wonderful one to continue. But
nothing dire is going to happen if it's missed for a year. Having a
child seriously injured or killed in an automobile accident – now
that would be dire.
At
this point, I've no idea what the future holds. Maybe we'll pick up
again next year (when I canceled the reservation, I made one for next
January), and this will just be the “year we missed”. Maybe
we'll be able to only do it sporadically in years to come. Maybe
we'll never have another such weekend, because the time for them in
our lives has passed. Whatever the outcome, it's in God's hands, and
I'm much more comfortable leaving it there. Special things like
getaway weekends are wonderful gifts, but He has so many other
blessings, everyday blessings that we tend to take for granted and
even forget are blessings.
Sometimes
we just need something to remind us of them.
