The Blessing of Rest
The bell finally rang, signaling the end of fifth period and the beginning of fall break. Joe and I mostly just took deep breaths over celebratory Noble Romans - the kinds of deep breaths you take after surviving a near-death experience or finishing a hundred-yard all-out sprint. That's not to say that the past trimester wasn't good- read my previous post for proof of that. It's just that we were made for rest. And this time, I felt unprecedentedly desperate for rest.
We spent Friday night packing and praising God for Factory Warranties that allowed my broken transmission to be repaired at no cost. We picked up our Equinox from the service garage and headed for the hills with one goal in mind for fall break: rest.
Our drive to North Carolina was nearly seamless. The primary crisis was that by the time we were hungry enough for Chick-Fil-A, we were in the thickest part of the Smokies without a restaurant in sight. Joe wove through curvy mountain roads while I made peanut-butter and honey sandwiches and resigned myself to the inevitable psoriasis destined to cover my elbows and knees at the impending gluten consumption. Worth it, I thought hungrily. It's vacation anyway.
We made it to Asheville, where we had planned on spending most of our time, and realized the traffic-crazed streets felt too much like San Francisco and nothing like rest. We kept driving South. Away from the traffic, away from the crowds, all the way through the door of a rural restaurant known as The Moose Cafe, a hole-in-the-wall truck stop reminiscent of Cracker Barrel and grandma's house. I ordered a meatloaf but mostly ate Joe's buttermilk fried chicken. He mostly ate my meatloaf. The menu had a pie special with chicken and dumplings, our waitress had a thick southern accent and a gummy lack of teeth. She called us Baby and brought out warm biscuits (cue the psoriasis!) while we waited for the meal.
We nervously approached our Air B&B, hoping our cabin was slightly less secluded than it appeared on the website. We are, after all, suburbs-dwellers now, and we've grown quite fond of the idea of neighbors. But of course, they have to be the right neighbors: Ideally non-intrusive non-murderers, hopefully someone who could lend us some suga' and also lend a hand in the event of a bear attack. But at the same time, we didn't want to be totally surrounded by people. Picky, we recognized that. Picky and prayerful.
God provided, of course. We drove down a gravel driveway which started at the trailer-junkyard of a maybe-murderer, but then the next neighbor was a Sheriff, so we were good. The end of the gravel road had a sweet older woman with her grandson, definitely a potential sugar-lender. She pointed us to the top of the hill to Cabin 333: Our home for the week.
Most of the week was spent in deliberate slow motion. We tried to take our time eating, to not worry about a schedule, to stay in bed for as long as possible - all delicacies we neglect in the hustle of the school year. We found a town much smaller than Asheville but with every bit of its touristy charm: Brevard, "Land of the Waterfalls," home to outdoorsy apparel shops, homemade fudge, and a restaurant called Steamers that looks like a carpet cleaning company but actually produces NC's best bagel.
We hiked Looking Glass mountain (six hours longer than expected), enjoyed nightly bonfires under the stars, and played more rounds of Yahtzee than I'd like to admit. In the Name:___ blank atop the Yahtzee card, my husband wrote Sam Darnold...the quarterback for the Panthers. We'll never know, but we dream of future visitors opening that Yahtzee box with a gasp and saying, "Sam Darnold stayed here!" As if Sam Darnold would a) stay in a $69/night cabin in rural Transylvania County and b) write his first and last name on top of a yellowing Yahtzee card. I'm optimistic. I bet he'd do both.
It was a trip that smoothed my callousness- the callouses created by seeming ceaselessness and seldomly silent students. The callouses that cause me to forget my Creator, to only focus in on the tasks ahead of me, to let my to-do list trump my true worship of the Only One who matters. Something about mountains and slowness brought me back to the fold of grace, the fold of God. I hope to create more of that in my own living room- in flat, suburban Indiana. I think my soul is dependent on it.