myrtle beach, 2020. – gentino family

Thanks to some friends at church, we got a lovely, week-long lake vacation back in May. Typically we take our family vacation in September, so David and I decided to do a shortened version this year. May was only four months ago, but we were exhausted and in need of some rest.

Our Classical Village co-op, meets Tuesdays and Wednesdays, so we planned a Myrtle Beach trip from Wednesday afternoon to Monday.

From the very beginning this vacation was less-than-ideal.

About an hour into the car trip, I realized I forgot the neatly packed bag with my Bible, journal, and books to prep for teaching when we got back home. I could’ve cried. But at least the other books I brought to read were packed in the suitcase, so I wasn’t entirely bereft.

Then, we arrived at our Airbnb condo, and it wasn’t in good shape at all. It desperately needed a deep clean, and there were numerous scuffs, knicks, and stains. There was mildew in the master bathroom, and oily fingerprints on every wall.

I was so mortified that I instantly and obsessively began unpacking all our things, wiping out drawers before I did so. That’s what I do when I’m stressed: I organize. In retrospect it probably wasn’t the best use of my time and energy, but oh well.

The kids were bouncing off the walls (well, two of them were anyway), so David finally urged me to take them down to the beach to play, while Judah dived into the mountain of homework he brought and David called the property group. So I did.

After two hours, David had gotten nowhere. The property group was difficult to work with and blamed us for being too picky. He filed a complaint with Airbnb.

I’ll tell you now what we learned from this experience: we could’ve booked another condo and gotten a refund from Airbnb. But we didn’t know that then, and we were nervous to pay for another place without knowing if we’d get our money back.

Anyway. Lesson learned.

I brought the three younger kids up from the beach and we had a family meeting. We all confessed our disappointment (except Gabe and Noah, who are famously easy-going and resilient), prayed together for God to give us grateful hearts instead of frustrated ones, then decided to order Thai food.

And that was that.

It was hard for me to stay in that condo for five days, but the beach was lovely. We couldn’t have had more perfect weather — mostly overcast. Not too hot or too cold, beautiful water for swimming and boogie boarding. And we discovered a new family hobby: searching for shark’s teeth.

The Myrtle Beach locals were friendly and more than happy to coach us in our searches, and we found dozens over the course of 5 days. Actually we found 200 altogether!

It’s fun to train your eyes in what to look for, and to find your skill growing.

A friend from church heard about our condo disappointment, and texted to offer us her place near Charleston. We seriously considered it, but by that point we had just three nights left, and as the mom, it felt like a monumental task to pack everyone up and move us somewhere else. So we stayed put. But we felt loved.

The next thing that happened is we found out we’d been exposed to COVID the weekend before, on a church leadership retreat. And then all four kids got sick.

Their symptoms were so similar to our friend that tested positive, that we were convinced that they had it. Thankfully it wasn’t terrible — just a bad cold. Judah and Amie had it worst with low grade fevers too.

We decided to have David and Judah tested at a CVS there at the beach. The younger kids would need to be tested at our pediatrician.

Thankfully the virus was short-lived. Everyone was feeling better within about 48 hours of their symptoms.

In addition to that, some things were going on back home that required multiple phone calls from David and several stressful conversations between the two of us.

I struggled with my disappointment about our vacation. I battled a victim mentality that wanted to ask God, “Why us?”

But I also saw growth in myself. At other points in my life I would’ve given in to such thoughts and carried a complaining, grouchy attitude all week.

This time, the Lord met me in that disappointed place. He allowed me to stop asking the question, “Why me?” and instead look for ways He was showing His love and care for us in disappointing circumstances.

I occurred to me that it was so good for our kids to see David and me not get our way. It was good for them to see us accept not getting our way, then, with God’s help, to choose joy and gratitude and to laugh about everything that went wrong.

God gave us funny and sweet new memories during our trip.

We laughed over the disaster of our Airbnb, and the mounds of tissues that accumulated. We read novels and took long walks on the beach and ate carry-out. David and I remarked that if we had to have stressful conversations, at least we were doing it with an ocean-view. And, despite the colds, we gave thanks for good health in our family, and God’s protection on the part of our church family who were on the retreat.

God doesn’t owe us a single thing.

We owe Him everything, every good and perfect thing that happens in our life. Even a vacation with multiple mishaps is a gift, a chance to get away together as a family and enjoy the ferocious beauty of His creation there at the beach.

When we arrived home, we found out, much to our surprise, that David tested positive for the virus, while Judah was negative. We were sure it would be the other way around.

So now we’re in a quarantine — 10 days for David and 14 for the rest of us. People are checking in on us, running to the store for us, and being so encouraging. As I type this post, David is preaching his sermon for tomorrow in his parents’ backyard, and Reid is video taping it to be played in the worship services.

We’re thankful to be symptom-free at this point, and I’m learning how to teach my homeschool English class over Zoom. And having a ton of compassion for teachers across our country.

Every day, there are so many things to thank God for. Truly, His mercies are new every morning. Great is His faithfulness.