Taking Time for Eternity

Okay, so The Hubby and I are back from vacation-- the first one we've taken since our honeymoon.

We discovered that we really like vacations.

I learned a lot this trip, mainly because camping really wasn't my family's thing growing up, and it was for Nathan's. So I had the chance to learn about building fires, backing up trailers, and pitching a tent this weekend.

**Um, P.S.-- bear with me as I blog about all this. I didn't write at all this week--not one tittle of journaling or typing--so I'm a little backed up with ideas. I imagine they'll look kind of goopy when I start to write about them, but I'm going to plunge ahead anyway and see what I can work out.

The hard thing is that the ideas are so lovely in my head, but look so muddy when I try to put them down. So that'll be my job this week-- trying to stir and clear the waters as these ideas settle.**

So to begin, this was the first vacation Nathan and I've taken since we've been married, as in, an extended time together with nothing planned. And it was great.

We didn't do anything fancy. We found a campsite along Center Hill Lake where you can rent camping "pads"--literally, gravel squares with water and power hook-ups-- for $18 bucks a night. You're only about 100 feet, if that, from the water, and are within walking distance to a public shower and restroom facility.

Not bad at all.

So we hitched the Master Craft up to the Ridgeline, and tucked in the kayaks. We stuffed the truck's cab to bursting with towels, bedding, tent, clothes, food stuffs, and the necessary cooking and picnicking utensils. The Hubby constructed a portable wood "box" around one of our air-conditioning units, so yeah, we would have air-conditioning in our tent.

Mainly The Hubby was trying extra hard to make sure that I liked camping so that I'd be willing to do it again.

Once we arrived, we had no schedule, so we were free to take as long as we wanted to do anything--set up camp, make a fire, cook dinner...talk. There was no rush. And for nearly three full days there was really no time. We barely checked our phones except for weather alerts (storms surrounded the area, dousing us several times) and to make sure we received no emergency communications from family.

Because there was no time, we talked longer, breathed more, laughed more, didn't get irritated. Not once did I feel the need to hustle him along; not once did he look concerned about "getting to do everything he wanted to do"because frankly there was more than enough time for everything. Even time to get a little bored, but it was actually nice, because we didn't know what that felt like. So we lazily picked up books to read around the campfire and then we weren't bored anymore.

In Sheldon Vanauken's spiritual autobiography, A Severe Mercy, he writes about his and his wife, Davey, and their desire for timelessness-- a space where time didn't matter, where there was no rush, no distractions, no hurries or have-tos, only the eternal present, which is of course only a foretaste of the Real Eternity.

I watched Nathan buried in his book or poking the fire contentedly. I realized that for some 48 hours I had felt neither weary nor stressed nor inadequate nor late nor lacking. We were just being ourselves without reference to other time or someone else's expectations or demands. I felt whole. And I wondered if this is what Vanauken meant and what Eternity must feel like, just a little.

I hope to carry that sense of timelessness, back with me into the dailyness today. In being away, it was good to practice a little bit of eternity, even if for a little while.