On retreat and beginning to muse - dangerous!

We made it. We are are officially on retreat! We picked up what turns out to be a 1977 classic Mercedes 280s in Auckland which will be our official mode of transport while away. It is very yellow - a stand out car in more ways than one.

We are settled into a nice two story chalet minutes walk from the beach in Raglan. I have finally managed to get my mobile phone operating as a modem for my laptop, so I am online.

So, where do I start? For those interested in this blog, I will keep my musings brief and hopefully meaningful. I won't write too much about cafes and beach walks (of which there are some good ones), but about a journey of rediscovering some kind of equilibrium to life. A few weeks before we left, my friend John Rush made the comment that when we get too tired and stressed, our loved ones can lose us. Just a passing comment, but it resonated with me. The person we really are, our personality, our laughter, our compassion - the real person our spouse fell in love with gets lost.

In its place we become a shell of our former self, a shadow of who we can really be. We become a machine. Cogs turning, business done, but distant from those around us. The important things in life like love and laughter get placed on the back burner and reappear only momentarily, and life becomes getting the business done.

Deadlines, activity, stress, and moments of sheer exhaustion.

I know. I've been there. Life becomes a balance of meeting the next deadline and feeling guilty about missing the last one.

So here's where we begin. We begin by establishing that living like that is not living at all. We decide we are not machines, but people made in the image of God. We are fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalms 139). We make it our commitment that the real me - healthy, vibrant, creative, fun to be around, and ultimately productive in life, will again be found and bought to the fore. We reconnect with God in a meaningful way, and we again find the love, the appreciation, and the laughter of being in healthy relationship with those closest to us. We remember our hopes and our dreams, our strengths and our gifts, and we fill the tanks once again to begin to live - not just breath and have a beating heart - but LIVE. Herein is the beginning of a journey. Let's travel together.