Vacation isn’t just an opportunity to catch our breath, it’s also an important opportunity to recalibrate!
When I think of recalibration, I think of recalibrating a battery (e.g., a laptop or cell phone battery) — occasionally, you need to fully drain it and then recharge it (at least, that’s how I understand it). Colors on a computer monitor can be recalibrated.
Recalibrating is a form of resetting things back to their defaults, the way they were intended to be. For people, it’s about getting back to the basics of healthy living.
Today, we wrapped up our vacation. It has been a time of catching our breath and also recalibrating. On just about every vacation we’ve had, we always seem to talk about getting back to the basics of taking care of ourselves in our lives and ministries (although I’m not sure how much good it does 😉 ).
Recalibration has always been important, though. It’s important to our ministries, of course (when we’re drained, we have less to give/offer), and it’s always been important to our marriage. But, now with a child (and eventually a second child), it’s even more critical than ever that we learn to live in healthy ways.
Our primary challenge is finding — or scheduling — family time in the midst of our fluid schedules. Our schedules change from day to day and from week to week — one or both of us nearly always have (multiple) evening meetings during the week and those nights change from week to week. Our fluid schedules require that we be flexible and, at times, creative!
We’ve normally done well with vacations, and we’ve generally done a decent job with our days off (although we probably need to incorporate more “sabbath time” into those days) — it’s the other six days we need to recalibrate. The health and quality of our ministries, and more importantly, our family life, depends on us living in healthy ways!
So, in addition to the basics (e.g., time with God, reading for personal growth, etc.), here are a couple specific growing edges for us going forward …
- Incorporate more sabbath time into our days off (of course, every day needs some sabbath time).
- Schedule family time (and couple time) throughout the other six days.
In what areas do you need to do some recalibrating? What are you going to do about it?