I took a vacation this week.
Oh, it might not have looked like it to my roommate or co-workers. I didn't take any time off, or travel on the weekend, or any of those things that people generally call vacations.
But I left, laying aside my postmodern unceasing schedule of the last three or four months, leaving behind the strain and intensity I've been under for a while in the responsibilities and pressures and internal drives of this not-quite-26-year-old's world.
The sweetest thing about choosing to step quite away from my over-worn mental paths was rediscovering an uncomplicated level of life. A friend read me a Winnie-the-Pooh story and I laughed and laughed. How true and clean it was! I went to the library at the beginning of the week and found myself first in the JV section and then, for the first time in years, in the kid's section actually pulling titles off the shelves. Oh my goodness the delight! I have been a reader since first grade, and I used to come home from the library every few weeks with a stack of books that went from under my chin to as far down as my arms could stretch. Granted, there was less space from under my chin to the reach of my arms when I was a kid than now, but that is still a lot of books! I have missed the color and brain break - break from the grind of life, really - that reading good fiction will bring. I still read, but much less, as my time is doled out between work and ministry and friends and house chores and getting some exercise and all the details of adult life.
So there I was, "une Grande Personne" as the Little Prince would say, in the children's section of the library, and how the smile irrepressibly spread across my entire face as I saw and remembered all these stories that taught me and grew me and gave me friends and magic and travel and courage and kindness. The Giver, The Railway Children, Half Magic, The Good Master, Farmer Boy, The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle, A Wrinkle In Time, on and on they sparkled in my mind. I left with a tower of children's books in my arms, not quiiiite stretching from the top of my chin to the ends of my fingertips, but a considerable long pile wedged lovingly between my side and the length of my left arm.
Perhaps I have to grow well past childhood before I can be young again. This stack of books, this armful of paper treasure, brings me again to that simple deep delight. But it is even more precious this time around because now I'm seeing it in contrast to adulthood.
Oh, it might not have looked like it to my roommate or co-workers. I didn't take any time off, or travel on the weekend, or any of those things that people generally call vacations.
But I left, laying aside my postmodern unceasing schedule of the last three or four months, leaving behind the strain and intensity I've been under for a while in the responsibilities and pressures and internal drives of this not-quite-26-year-old's world.
The sweetest thing about choosing to step quite away from my over-worn mental paths was rediscovering an uncomplicated level of life. A friend read me a Winnie-the-Pooh story and I laughed and laughed. How true and clean it was! I went to the library at the beginning of the week and found myself first in the JV section and then, for the first time in years, in the kid's section actually pulling titles off the shelves. Oh my goodness the delight! I have been a reader since first grade, and I used to come home from the library every few weeks with a stack of books that went from under my chin to as far down as my arms could stretch. Granted, there was less space from under my chin to the reach of my arms when I was a kid than now, but that is still a lot of books! I have missed the color and brain break - break from the grind of life, really - that reading good fiction will bring. I still read, but much less, as my time is doled out between work and ministry and friends and house chores and getting some exercise and all the details of adult life.
So there I was, "une Grande Personne" as the Little Prince would say, in the children's section of the library, and how the smile irrepressibly spread across my entire face as I saw and remembered all these stories that taught me and grew me and gave me friends and magic and travel and courage and kindness. The Giver, The Railway Children, Half Magic, The Good Master, Farmer Boy, The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle, A Wrinkle In Time, on and on they sparkled in my mind. I left with a tower of children's books in my arms, not quiiiite stretching from the top of my chin to the ends of my fingertips, but a considerable long pile wedged lovingly between my side and the length of my left arm.
Perhaps I have to grow well past childhood before I can be young again. This stack of books, this armful of paper treasure, brings me again to that simple deep delight. But it is even more precious this time around because now I'm seeing it in contrast to adulthood.
