pawleys island 2022. – gentino family

As I alluded to in my last post, August was a challenging month. So was the beginning of September. The end of summer, start of school and soccer and beginning high school for Judah (still homeschooled but attending a new co-op and adjusting to a bigger work load). I’m teaching four classes for our co-op this year, one is a high school class and has doubled my weekly prep time.

Kira was spayed at the beginning of September, a surgery that was delayed two times because the first time she went into heat and the second she had an infection at the site of her original leg surgery she was recovering from when we adopted her. She also needed a couple of malformed dew clews removed, and so had four incisions total.

The week that followed was incredibly stressful, as one of the incisions kept opening up despite a cone collar and going back in for staples. She didn’t sleep through the night and needed to be watched constantly to keep her as calm as possible. I’ll spare you the pictures of her leg wound but it was truly awful-looking. All of this combined to make one very exhausted household at the start of vacation.

David’s parents were going to keep Kira for us, but we all just knew that would be incredibly challenging for them. On the morning we left, as I stood in tears at the vet’s office yet again, our sweet friend from church, Laura, offered to keep Kira instead. That was an enormous load off our minds, and since Laura works at our vet, she promised to make sure Kira got everything she need with her surgery complications.

And so at long last we set off last Monday!

We were able to come back to our beloved condo on Pawley’s Island for another year.

On that first sunny, breezy late-afternoon, we did a 20-minute family unpack to settle in, then David and the kids hit the beach for a long walk while I organized and stowed away the food we brought and generally took a moment to breathe.

As I headed down to the beach shortly afterwards with a chair and a book, I felt my heart in turmoil. Somehow I’d lost myself, back home, in these recent months. I can’t put my finger on what specifically went wrong — many things were going right, in fact — but I’d begun to live out of the place of stress and overwhelm. I’d drifted. So often over the last two months I’ve just cried as I’ve felt the utter impossibility of being all things to all people, to keep my commitments and remember my appointments and not drop several balls as I juggle the needs of our family and our growing church.

And so my heart was not at peace.

I could hardly make myself relax there on the beach, so I jumped up and began walking myself, along the stretch of shore. I made myself splash in the salty water as I walked and lift my face to the wind and watched the birds, always so busy and happy as they dart across the sand. I wanted to remember what it felt like to live in my body, in the present moment, rather than in my swirling thoughts and my stress.

I have to say that it helped. Not all at once, but slowly and surely over the course of this week it has changed things for me.

I’ve made time to journal again, and sat with lingering cups of coffee and my Bible. I’ve written out my prayers to God instead of breathed them quickly as I begin another day. I’ve told Him that the cry of my heart is to be at peace again. I know life is busy, but I don’t want a heart that’s busy. I want a heart that’s resting, like Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus.

He has given us all rest this week.

It is good to be away from our normal routine. Sometimes you have to step outside of it in order to evaluate things and to sort them out. I’ve sat with a wonderful book, The Soul of Desire, by Curt Thompson. Actually, I finished it — it’s one I started several months ago at the recommendation of my counselor. It put words to so many of my struggles and my longings and showed me how to dream about the future. Not the future like making new plans, but the future, as in, What kind of person do I want to be? What environment do I want to help create in my world? How can I contribute to beauty in my own small way?

I’ve had to do school prep this week, yes, just at the kids have had to plug away at homework (the price we pay for taking a vacation in September when the heat and crowds have eased and the prices are less expensive). But I’ve been able to take lots of time to talk to my family, to laugh together over games, to go on walks and play “over/under” in the ocean and take hour-long naps each day.

Even cooking here at the beach has felt soothing. Life is just … simpler. I think that’s what vacation is for.

We love our life back home, filled to the brim with people. But it’s been a gift to be here, just the six of us again. With hours upon hours of just our family in the beauty of God’s creation.

The Lord has helped me see that my problem has come from gazing long and hard at my stress, rather than gazing long and hard at His beauty. I dwell with my to-do list, feeling it as a burden, rather than dwelling with Him, in His love, as I’m checking off my to-do list.

I have everything I need to obey Him — even if my perfectionism rails at me that it’s never enough. That I’m not enough. He is not disappointed with me.

One of the things that made me saddest back home is the way my stress affected everyone — I know how true it is that my emotional state is felt deeply by our family, whether for good or ill. It’s a weight of responsibility as a wife and mother.

And so this week was a chance to lay that burden at the feet of Jesus and ask Him for help.

When we return to Columbia tomorrow I’m asking for His joy to be my strength — not my ability to white-knuckle through my commitments. I want a levity of heart in the face of busy days that only the Holy Spirit can bring, the ability to laugh at myself when I mess up and just go right on loving my people the best that I can. I’m a pessimist by nature, so it would truly be a miracle if He did that in me.

I think I’ve been putting my trust in my day-planner and my schedule and work-out routine and the kids chore charts and waking up earlier. None of those are bad things. They are great things, actually. But not something to put your trust in.

I read somewhere once that the problem with perfectionism is that you need things to go exactly a certain way in order to perform in the way you want and feel successful. And so if one part of that equation goes wrong, you throw your hands up in despair because you can’t be perfect. Or you get frustrated with the things and people that are getting in your way of “being perfect.”

That’s my idol of control. If my house can look a certain way, the kids behave in a certain way, if David would just offer to help with the exact chore I want him to do without me telling him what that mysterious chore is, then I can perform up to my standard. Then I’ll feel worthy of being loved.

This week I repent of those same, tired sins all over again. I receive God’s extravagant forgiveness and then I choose a different life.

I choose freedom.

I choose to believe I’m loved deeply, for who I am and not what I do or the needs that I meet.

I choose to enjoy my husband and my children for who they are right now, imperfections and all, because I desperately long to be enjoyed, imperfections and all.

I choose to accept my limits and not get angry about them.

I choose to be grateful every day for this busy, messy, imperfect, beautiful life.

I choose to hope in the future of being whole and healed in the presence of Jesus forever.

With God’s help, when we pack up and drive home tomorrow, I choose the promise of Proverbs 31:

Strength and dignity are her clothing,
and she laughs at the time to come.
She opens her mouth with wisdom,
and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.

He is worthy of my joy and praise and trust.

That’s the gift of our beach vacation.