Ah, Vacation.

I’ve been on vacation and just arrived home. It was a great vacation–relaxing, good friends, good food, excellent open water swimming conditions. I swam more this vacation than I ever have. Swimming works out the knots of middle age and life in general, loosening the shoulder muscles and the brain simultaneously.

There have been some challenges this season, before and during vacation. I left one job and am pursuing another, and didn’t get the first position I interviewed for. It happens. They chose a candidate with more experience. Who can argue with that? I have no experience to date in international missions and that was where the job focused. But me, unemployed? I did not imagine it.

My mother and grandmother continue to struggle with their health. My mother has a progressive disease that is robbing her of the use of her limbs, and my grandmother, with the slow tick of Alzheimer’s, the use of her brain. My oldest brother is their caregiver. No doubt he finds himself in a role he did not imagine as well. I pray for him, that he finds life’s small joys where he can and laughs when he can. There is an art to simply being, and at the same time being content with the circumstances in which you find yourself.

I found out I didn’t get the job while on vacation. I was bummed, but it didn’t effect my vacation or my enjoyment of it. Indeed, it was a great place to get the news. What better way to reboot than to take a pair of goggles and dive into the beautiful ocean and swim, swim, swim. The art of simply being.

I visited my mom and grandmother briefly on the way home from vacation. They were well, though “well” is a relative term these days. I will see them soon, when my new grandniece is born (so my brother, the baby’s grandfather, can see her), and for my usual monthly visit later this month. The art of simply being.

I remain confused and frustrated, though, at God’s demand that I practice this art while also waiting on him and his timing, but at the same time not resting on my laurels and expecting a delivery from God that contains a new job and cures for incurable diseases, in a nicely wrapped FedEx box.

Waiting and being, with planning and doing. I must, we must, be engaging in both.

Are you engaging in both? What are you waiting on, and what are you doing about it in the meantime?