July 11th, 2016
I desired to be near.
At first, the thought came and went. Then, it stayed. It was followed by a gentle, yet consistent, nudging to go. On May 24th, the daily reading in my devotional was titled, “Get There.” I read several aligning thoughts and then came across this one…
“There is no substitute for time spent together, face-to-face, in the same place.”
We began to look at plane tickets.
So many conversations were enfolded between the above sentences. Ones about desires, possibilities, limitations and resources. I didn’t want to regret not going. Yet, we hadn’t intended to take a trip back so soon. That was saved for NEXT summer. But the nudging didn’t stop…
From the day E finished school, we had a month before our two-week visit from Hubby’s parents in mid-July that includes a mini-vacation to London. As we worked out the details, the dates were aligning with work, family, friends and a wedding of a young woman I’ve walked alongside since she was fourteen. We would stay at the beach the first half of the trip; a place and people the boys had been talking about for months.
We found INCREDIBLE deals on plane tickets and booked them the morning we left on our Bavaria trip. It wasn’t all perfect. We couldn’t see all the faces we longed for, our family would be separated mid-trip since Hubby needed to be back for work and many details were left up in the air to be worked out with time.
But, we still went…
to be near
to be present
to see the ocean again.
Here’s the highlights (in pictures) from our first week…
For the past ten years, my parents have rented the same beach house. The first two years we went, there were eight of us. Slowly, we grew into a family of eleven. The oldest grandchild is now seventeen and the youngest is five.
We brought both boys here since they were babies and have watched them crawl, walk and run along these shores. Oh the memories!
Looking back…
Fast Forward…
With our typical early mornings (due to the combination of internal clocks and jet-lag), we enjoyed looking for sea shells and sand dollars…always getting more wet then I originally intended!
Time to Play!
Sweet cousin time…
We met up with “Favorite”, a fun surprise!
New memories…
One of my favorite moments was laying beside my parents, watching an old movie that made us laugh. I held my Mami’s hand while my head rested against my Dad. How I love them.
Before we knew it, we were saying goodbye and boarding separate airplanes. Hubby returned to Germany while the boys and I headed for the mountains. Being near can come with its own challenges, but such is life. The good far outweighs the hard. I’m so thankful we went!
