Refreshed and Tired

We just got back a couple of hours ago from a 5-day (motorhome) camping trip. We left the day after the girls' school finished, in a hectic flurry of packing, food shopping and organizing, and headed south only about 20 miles, to a members-only campground that had offered us a free three-night stay if we would listen to their sales spiel. We figured this wouldn't be hard to say no to at all, and since RV campground fees can get rather expensive it seemed like a great solution for a cheap way to get away for a few days. We made reservations for two-nights at one of our favorite campgrounds a little farther south near the beach for right afterwards.

Well the experience didn't work out quite as easily as we had hoped. The campground was actually delightful, much nicer than we had expected, and the sales spiel was much harder to say "no" to than we had planned for. Rather than relaxing and leaving behind the cares of daily life and the worries of unemployment, we spent hours getting emotionally hooked by fancy vacation dreams (membership included access to cheap condo deals) and visions of being able to frequently relax by the pool in this spacious and comfortable campground and others like it. This was followed by hours of cost/benefit analysis and a review of our financial situation, only to reaffirm to ourselves what we had known all along - there was no way we were buying a membership (especially a new one) at this time! Then we had to have the persistence to tell the sales people, over and over again, that we could not buy a membership right now, and that they didn't need to keep coming up with more generous finance schemes because we were not going to go into debt for this (we never even went into debt to get the motorhome, my parents gave it to us when they couldn't use it any more). It was exhausting.

In between all the agonizing, we did enjoy the campground. We took walks, saw deer in a nearby field and baby birds in a nest near the store. The girls and I swam in the pool, while my husband surfed the net, using their new wireless service, from the poolside (I only had time to read one or two blogs!). We BBQ'ed and relaxed. Even the stress of discussing finances and future uncertainties was not all bad, as it opened the door for some conversations that my husband and I needed to have. We were glad, though, when it was time to move on to the other campground. I wonder if we will ever end up getting a membership to that campground and returning? I really don't know. I do know that it's not worth stretching ourselves beyond our means for!

Our time at the next campground was exhausting, but fun. We were met there by our good friends and their three young foster children, who are quite a handful but who we really care about. The children may be returning to their birth parents soon (which may or may not turn out to be a good thing), so we enjoyed getting to spend this time together with them now. The children have become very attached to my girls over the last few months, and we had a great, if exhausting, time together with them playing on the beach and visiting the Monterey Bay Aquarium before they returned home last night.

This morning my husband, the girls and I hiked out to the beach from the campground and sat in the misty, cool morning breeze, playing in the sand and watching the waves. We saw numerous kinds of birds - small black water birds bobbing in the waves, a huge V of some kind of black birds flying low over the waves, seagulls, and pelicans. We saw a few sea otters popping up and down in the kelp beds. We also saw our favorite sight at this beach - a pod of dolphins swam by, the lead dolphins jumping and leaping through the waves, followed eventually by a smaller and smaller trail of more sedate dolphins.

That time on the beach this morning, and the time yesterday with our friends, helped me so much to center back on what is really important. Fancy vacation dreams that we can't really afford right now (or the other things in life that I sometimes moan about not being able to afford) are really not important! Watching those dolphins cavorting through the waves, I thought "look at how wonderous this world is, how rich and abundant in life and resources God has made it!" Spending time with my friends, seeing their love for those children and their pain at the probability of loosing them to parents who have such a little likelihood of staying clean and straight and able to care for them well, reminds me of what a precious thing my family is. Today I returned to a home which is a mess, to chores and errands and work to do, and I am so thankful even for this. What a precious and wonderful life we have.