Restorative Moments and Margins

We are heading home as I write. We drove to Maryland on Friday and met our daughter Sara there. Over the weekend we visited with friends. On Sunday afternoon we headed up to Pennsylvania to visit with Bob parents and more friends, just missing the snow storm. Yesterday we drove Sara from Pennsylvania to Indiana where she’ll stay for most of her remaining time in the States.

So today we woke up tired! We chose to return to Ohio on a road we’ve never tried before. Instead of driving on a two-lane road for a while and I-70 through Columbus, we opted for US 30, a four-lane road from middle Indiana to middle Ohio. Even though it seemed a bit out of the way, it will take us about the same time.

The restorative part is that there is very little traffic and it goes through wide open spaces. It has been so nice just to drive through farmland and not have to weave in and out of a bunch of trucks.

Even though the scenery is pretty brown, it’s nature all the same. Nature has such restorative powers. When we lived in Maryland during a more stressful time in our lives, we would escape frequently to what we called our own private lake. It was a rather secluded little park where we could put our blankets down, play games, have dinner, sleep, read books - whatever we felt like doing at the moment. Just one hour at our lake had unbelievable restorative powers - even for our children!

We’ll arrive home in the early afternoon and receive a house of girls on Friday. Whenever we travel, we try to build in margins so as to allow ourselves some recovery time between one event and another. I’ve found that by allowing some room for margins creates less chaos and clutter. I want to be efficient, but I don’t want to pack things so tightly that I have no time to transition. The same is true for less time-consuming events as well.

Have you discovered some places that provide you with restorative moments? What about margins - do you give yourself ample margins to create some breathing room between events? If you receive this blog by email and want to comment, use this link.