Get Away from It All

Ray A. Seilhamer
Bishop, 1993-2001

July 1996

It’s July, and many of the cars you see on the highway have license plates from distant states. In many cases, they are families on vacation, taking a week or more to be together and visit new places.

Vacations are special times for families if quality time is given to each other. The are a time for bonding, for laughter, for visiting different parts of the country, for learning new things together. A time for adventure.

Ruth and I usually planned a camping vacation for our family. One of our most outstanding vacations took us to the Rocky Mountains. That enabled us to see a lot of the United States that we had never seen before. We would travel 200-300 miles a day, and then camp. We had many special experiences—building a campfire in the evening, taking walks around the campsite, fishing, going on boat rides, playing games in the trailer, and having devotional times together.

The trip featured wonderful opportunities for bonding. Our children still talk with fondness about our camping trip to the Rockies, including Rhonda’s bucking bronco during our horseback ride up Pike’s Peak.

They have similar memories of a later trip to the West Cost which enabled us to go to a retreat in the mountains of California. We went fishing, saw a Dodger baseball game, visited the Grand Canyon, and returned to the east through the southern part of the United States. Our children remember events that I have long forgotten. Interestingly, they now want their children to experience some of the same experiences they had as children.

Our family enjoys seeing wildlife. Camping exposed us to raccoons, squirrels, birds, chipmunks, deer, the occasional bear, and sometimes skunks.
There is always something special about walking to the restroom with a flashlight, listening to new sounds in the darkness. About roasting hotdogs and marshmallows and hamburgers and barbecued chicken over a camp stove or open fire.

A few times, our children took friends with them on a camping trip. That was special for them, and it gave our family the chance to model laughter, devotions, prayer, and in general what Christian love is all about.

Of course, vacations aren’t just for summer. We need to get away at times throughout the year to escape the stresses of daily life. Research reveals that it takes about five days to unwind before you can really begin to relax and get in touch with yourself and the people closest to you.

Ruth and I have a small farm near Camden, Mich. We go there for pleasure and relaxation. For me, that includes a lot of physical work. My daily work involves extensive travel, speaking, writing, and meetings. So I enjoy getting to the farm and tackling the many manual labor projects which always await me, whether they involve hammering, digging, painting, planting, or something else.

I like a quiet, restful atmosphere. We do not have a telephone at the farm, and for a long time we didn’t have a TV; we recently put a used color TV in the living room which will pick up six stations.

I am a person who handles stress well. I do not get uptight very often, and God has given me the ability to shut-down the things I need to deal with as Bishop, and pick up relaxation and fun and laughter without dragging a lot of office baggage with me. I can do this in Huntington even when I am close to the office. However, not everybody is like that. Many people need to get out-of-town before they can really begin to relax.

Getting away needs to be a priority, for the sake of our spiritual, physical, and emotional health. We can get away if we so choose. It’s part of a strategic plan that you can get away for your own spiritual and emotional health. One purpose of a vacation is rejuvenation, so you can return to your work with a higher level of excitement, motivation, and performance.

When Ruth and I grew up as children, we never took family vacations. At best, we took a day off to have a family reunion, but we never went away on a family vacation like people do today. So Ruth and I established something new in our family, something which our children enjoyed and will carry on in their own families.

Some of you have broken fresh ground in your families. Perhaps you were the first to go to college, to move to another state, to start your own business, to enter fulltime Christian service. Some of you were the first person in your family to become a Christian.

May I suggest that if the idea of a family vacation is foreign to your family, as it was to Ruth and me, that you break the mold and begin taking vacations? They are valuable, worthwhile experiences which will provide many enjoyable memories, and you’ll be glad you passed the idea along to your children, who can then pass it along to their own children.

I suggest that you plan vacations with a purpose, but leave room for spontaneity. Sometimes the most memorable experiences in life happen spontaneously. Plan, but be flexible.

Have a good trip.