I’m home in my own bed. As happy as I am to be home again, I’m always the tiniest bit sad when my vacation is over.

I’ll definitely miss those salty ocean breezes and the feel of wet sand between my toes. I’ll miss the sound of waves crashing on the beach at night and the blueness of the ocean water (except for the first day when it was full of seaweed).

But I’m thankful to have had the chance to spend time in a place and enjoyed it enough to miss it. Plus, it’s not like I’m never ever going to any beaches ever again.

I’m old enough and smart enough now to understand that you can’t live your entire life on vacation. Eventually you have to go back to reality and the routine.

I heard once that you need to cultivate the life to where you don’t live exclusively for holidays and weekends. Where you don’t need a vacation from your life but more like a vacation to compliment your life.

I have a good life. Yes, it’s good to get away periodically, but I’m content with where God has me and who I am becoming. Plus, I have plenty of photos and memories if I ever get the ol’ beach withdrawals.

This whole week has been a kind of time machine trip to the past. I’m staying in Panama City, the place where I made so many memories with my high school marching band and with my college and career group.

I absolutely recognized the Edgewater Beach Resort condos where I lodged over 20 years ago. They still look the same (at least to me they do).

The best part was going back to Captain Anderson’s where we always had the last meal of the trip before heading home. I half expected to see some of the friends I knew back then.

As far as actually going back in time, they’re still working on that one. I haven’t found any Tardis or Delorean that can take me back 20 years ago.

Still, I have memories and the places to revisit from time to time. I think that’ll do nicely.

If you want to show Christ to people instead of merely preaching Him at them, these are some good ways to do that. It might even start a gospel conversation or two.

You never know where a random act of kindness will lead. You never know who is watching. You never know when it will be you on the receiving end of a kind act. Most of all, it is how Jesus lived.

Preach absolutely, but let it be more than words. Let the good deeds prove that the faith you proclaim is genuine and the kind acts show that the person is more than a conversion quota but a human being who bears the Imago Dei, the image of God.

I witnessed another glorious sunset on the beach this evening.

While there’s no such thing as a bad sunset, there’s something special about seeing the sun sink into the ocean at close of day. It really doesn’t get any better than that.

I’m hoping that I can catch a beach sunrise (provided I can get my lazy butt out of bed in time).

More than that, I want to have my eyes open to more of the minute miraculous in my life. I don’t want to be so buried in my phone that I miss my life. I don’t want to be so consumed by past worries or future possibilities that I miss there here and now. There’s so much to see.

I want to be thankful for every moment I have left. The anniversary of 9/11 reminds me yet again of how precious and fleeting life is. 3,000 people went to bed on the previous night having no notion that it would be their last on this earth.

So here’s to more sunsets, sunrises, and eyes wide open. May none of us ever miss a moment of it. 

It almost seems surreal that I’m back in Panama City roughly 20 after the last time I was here with the Central Church college and career group. I even passed by the very Edgewater Beach Resort where I stayed way back in the day.

I love feeling sand between my toes again. I love the scent of salty ocean air, even if it feels like it’s coming out of a hot air vent. I still think sunsets on a beach are the best.

It’s hard to remember back to the late 90’s and who I was then. So much has changed around me and in me. I’m definitely not the same person I was then.

I’m looking forward to making new memories and enjoying my time away from the craziness of normal life. I hope to hear from God in these next few days.

Did I mention how much I love the ocean?

“…and it’s true — that sometimes…
the thing you never would choose for your life, chooses you for a reason.
And the thing that you’d never pick? Picks you to become brave.
And sometimes…
you get what you need — by walking through what you never wanted – 
and the thing you never wanted, may turn out to be be the thing you need most.
I hadn’t known but now believe: the thing that may make you fall a bit apart, may be part of what one day holds you a bit together” (Ann Voskamp).

I drove by my old office building today. It was the place where I was downsized from my job over 6 years ago.

At the time, it felt like it came out of nowhere. I didn’t have a clue when they called my name in the middle of the day that I was being let go. I had no idea that a lot of other people would lose their jobs that day.

As odd as it seems, I felt a complete calm about the whole thing. I knew that wasn’t where I was supposed to be. I also knew that had I not been laid off, I would have stayed there much longer because it was a safe, non-risky place. And I would have been miserable.

The next three years before I found my next full-time job were full of the usual ups and downs and highs and lows. I had quite the variety of temp job experiences and almost got hired a couple of times.

I see now looking back that God used what I didn’t think I wanted to get me to a better place physically, spiritually, and mentally. It’s still a work in progress, but it never would have begun if not for May 22, 2012.

I’m thankful for that day because that’s where God began showing up big time in my life and He hasn’t stopped.

I’m going on holiday. I like that version better than saying that I’m going on a vacation. Just another reason being British is better.

But I’m on the cusp of starting my vacation/holiday. I love that feeling. It’s the feeling that I don’t have to wake up early in the morning and make that commute to work. I get to sleep in and dream.

For the longest time, I couldn’t really grasp heaven. For some reason, none of the images I could conjure up really did anything for me. Until I read the last book in The Chronicles of Narnia series, The Last Battle. In it, C. S. Lewis describes the feeling of heaven as waking up after the last day of school and the beginning of summer holiday.

I remember that feeling. How all sorts of endless possibilities lay before me. How absolutely ecstatic I was when the reality sank in.

I’m not planning on going to heaven tomorrow. I’m planning on enjoying my week of vacation. But I know one day I will have that feeling of joy and it will never go away or grow less. That makes me smile.

That’s all, folks.

“The water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.’ –John 4:14

“We are to be fountains through which Jesus can flow as ‘rivers of living water’ in blessing to everyone. Yet some of us are like the Dead Sea, always receiving but never giving. Whenever the blessings are not being poured out in the same measure they are received, there is a defect in our relationship with Him. Stay at the Source, closely guarding your faith in Jesus Christ and your relationship to Him, and there will be a steady flow into the lives of others with no dryness or deadness whatsoever” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest).

Which one are you? Which one am I?

Are we like the Dead Sea, always taking and never giving or pouring life into others?

Or are we like rivers of living water, refreshing all who come into contact with us?

It’s a daily choice.

We don’t decide one day and auto default to whatever we want. We have to make the same choice tomorrow and the next day and the day after.

It’s a daily choice.

That means if I was a Dead Sea yesterday, hoarding blessings and being miserly with God’s grace, I don’t have to be that way to day. I can be a river of living water.

Which one will you and I choose to be?

I think I want to be as content as my cat Peanut (pictured above).

Some days, I’d like to have her little feline life and spend the whole day napping and eating and occassionally having a manic race through the house.

She has few concerns to worry her little mind. She knows her every need will be met and her people will look after her and take care of her.

She doesn’t live in the past or the future. She’s strictly in the present. That’s all she knows. She doesn’t fret over yesterday or fear tomorrow. She’s fully living in the moment.

Maybe I’d be less anxious and more content if I did the same.