unplugging for a week

Crystal and i are leaving right now for a week...

a little impromptu vacation gifted to us. extremely thankful.

& we're going to completely unplug. no email, no internet, no computer, no social networks, no iPad, no iPhone, no nothing like that.

just me & her in the mountains. 
unplugged.

just chillin'. enjoying all the amazing beauty all around us.

i can't wait. it's gonna be awesome.

but don't worry - i've got something set to post to renown each day we are gone... so you'll at least have something to read :)
(i'm sure when i get back i'll have a million new & fresh things to write about... things bouncing around in my mind & my soul.)

but i won't be writing or working or doing any thing like that all week.

my philosophy of vacation =
i work hard.
& then i rest hard.

furious rest.

gonna be so refreshing!

resting

rest.

i had no idea how much i needed rest until i started resting. didn't know how tired i actually was from this past year...

i just fell asleep on the couch today at like 11am without even meaning to. i was out cold.

earlier today i saw Rob Bell tweet something that perfectly describes my sabbaths. & vacation for me is simply a LONG yearly sabbath:

"On the Sabbath- we ask the question: what feeds our soul? And then we do that."

right on. just feeding my soul for these 2 weeks.

i love love love the part of vacation & all sabbaths where we just sleep in until we wake up. whenever that is. i hope i can train myself to sleep in until at least noon 1 of these days.

today was simply an amazing day of rest. and there are still double digit days of rest to go.

Crystal and i were chilling out in the ocean air by the pool and i had my iPod shuffling. randomly hit a song i hadn't heard in years. a flash back to high school days. i don't even know how it got on this iPod. but that song was very appropriate for this afternoon as i just sat there looking at God's amazing creation all around and resting in Him as a form of worship:

"i REST in the shelter of your love & i REST in the WONDER of YOU."

that shelter is BIG and this WONDER is endless.

i let it repeat a few times as i just rested.

philosophy of sickness, work (& rest)...

a lot of times I work out my philosophy of something or my "theology" of a certain topic as i'm going through it. My philosophy and theology tend to be way more practical that way instead of just theoretical.

So, currently I am sick, but of course I also have to work.
I guess my philosophy of working while sick could be summed up as = "always show up if you can drag yourself to do it (unless it is harmful to you or someone else)."

Those are pretty much my practical thougths on the matter. If I'm sick (but not contagious - which would be harmful to others) then I drag myself to staff meetings on Mondays.
Yesterday morning I was pretty sick but was able to drag myself out of bed and into load in at Ridge at 6am. I functioned OK and went through all my responsibilities and I'm guessing most peeps wouldn't be able to tell that I was sick.
then i came home and crashed & rested hard the rest of the day.

This morning I woke up still sick and really wanted to stay in bed, but I always tell myself = If i lay in bed i'll just feel sick laying in bed, but if i get up and go to work i will feel sick while getting work done. May as well get some work done, right?

That's my philosophy. I try to at least do/accomplish something when I'm sick. Even if it's the easy tasks. Some things aren't worth it when you're sick, but still... you can at least do something.
Maybe this was ingrained in me from my Dad, who to my knowledge never missed 1 day of work due to sickness in all my 18 living at home?

I also put "rest" in the title because I recognize that sometimes you do just need to rest in order to get over a sickness. + I am a big time advocate of sabbath and that rest is a beautiful God-ordained & God-glorifying thing. You can read some more of my thoughts on rest/sabbath HERE and HERE.

Do you have a philosophy and/or theology of work & sickness?