McClain Family Blog: A little time away

1 Corinthians 3:4-9

"For when one says, "I follow Paul," and another, "I follow Apollos," are you not mere men?

What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, God's building."

1 Corinthians 3:4-9

Sunday, August 29, 2010

A little time away

As we've said many times, this life, as exciting and full of stories as it may seem, is still life as you know it. We go through each day, the same as you. We have a routine, as do you. It is true that our routine is 'ideal' and not guarenteed to happen as we have it planned out, but all the same we have an ideal of how our day should go. Serving in ministry, we have found that we go through periods where we try to walk on our own, go on in our own strength, instead of that of our Father.

Recently, we've been in a period of pretty high stress, not anything really serious, but more of a combination of things that when added up, and when tried to handle in our strength, started to compound and wear us out.

One of the best gifts God has given us is the blessing of living near the ocean. All five of us love the water, the sand, the beach and the way being there brings us back to our smallness and reminds of us how big our God is.

We hold Saturdays as our family day- which means no ministry, no friends, nothing but family activities. Many times, we head to the beach on Saturdays, even if just for an hour or so. For several weeks we have had other things going on and got away from this a little bit. When that happens, things always get a little off kilter.

This week, we were able to get away for several hours in the middle of the week and take the kids to the beach. Then, yesterday, we spontaneously decided to take the dogs to the beach for a little run and the chance to play in the water.

Both days were a great way to rejuvenate and recharge, which are especially important. And we are able to really just focus on our kids, which is the best rejuvenation of all. In my opinion, they are three of the best little gifts in the whole world! :)

We had a great time and it served to give us a few hours of much needed family time in the midst of a period of a little bit of stress that we'd been experiencing.

Here are a few pictures...

This day the tide was out so far we saw parts of the beach we hadn't seen before. Matt and the kdis were able to walk way out to a sandbar.

There was also a huge ledge of sand showing us exactly how far the tide had come in. It created a nice little mountain the kids enjoyed playing on. Ethan really enjoyed it.

The sandbar was beautiful and the waves cresting against it were beautiful.

Matt and the kids always have really great Daddy times when we are able to get to the beach.

You can see the difference in the beach from just a few days. This is the same stretch that was in some of the previous pictures, but much less beach and a much higher tide.