If I were to ask you “What is the purpose of a vacation?” what might be your response? For most Americans, the typical response is that they desire to escape for a few days from their ordinary, everyday life. Escape the house cleaning, escape the job, escape responsibility; enjoy ourselves; hedonism. Vacations for many are a chance to not deal with the items that cause us to feel stressed and feel anxiety in our regular routines. Not that I don’t wrestle with these same things when planning a getaway for our family, but for our family we hope the vacation is a little more intentional then just an escape.
When I was growing up my family didn’t take vacations; not that my parents wouldn’t have liked to get away, we just never had the resources to do that. As I look at my family and I think about taking a trip, my desire is not necessarily to get away. If that were the case, I could get in my car and go on my own; because that sounds like that’s my own issue. When getting ready to go away with my family, I want it to be more about bringing my family together and enjoying and learning about one another as opposed to just going somewhere else.
Intentional conversations about faith, ambitions and relationships are all pretty normal when we go away. Living with someone in the same room for a few days will give us lots of time to talk about these important areas unless all we want to do is stay busy, go swimming (which would be my son’s choice) or watch TV. I found that I need to be careful though, because the stress of being away from home can cause me to be distracted and steer us away from making it a quality family getaway; I would caution you about the same thing.
So plan your next family vacation, but make it with a higher purpose then just getting away. Plan it with the purpose of drawing your family closer together.
