Staycation, All I Ever Wanted

This past week, I stayed home.

No airports. No road trips. No packing lists or frantic last-minute stops at Walmart. Just…home.

I spent hours in the garden, moving slowly down the rows of green beans, letting my fingers search out each tender pod hidden among the leaves. I felt the breeze lifting the brim of my floppy hat, heard the bees and birds and distant lawn mowers humming their summer song. Time moved differently out there. It wasn’t about productivity or harvesting as fast as possible. It was about being present. About remembering that this land holds life and life holds God.

In the evenings, I sat in the hot tub as the sky turned pink and the bats began their nightly dance overhead. Warm water, cool night air, the smell of cut grass drifting across the yard. Sometimes I closed my eyes and felt my heartbeat settle into something calm and ancient, like the rhythms of the earth itself.

Throughout the week, I found myself thinking about how little we notice when we’re always moving. How easy it is to miss the quiet glimpses of the Divine woven into our ordinary days: the bee dusted with pollen, the hush of dusk, the feel of tomato vines brushing against my arm. Each moment became a doorway to something holy.

I spent time with my family and with my dogs, just being together without the pressing need to rush off to the next thing. I sat with my thoughts, even the heavy ones, without trying to fix or escape them. I prayed in ways that didn’t use words. I let silence say what needed to be said.

And I realized: this is the life I long for. A life that notices. A life that slows down enough to be changed by the breeze, the bees, the quiet presence of God that pulses through every green bean vine and every beating heart.

We think we need to leave home to find rest, but maybe the deepest rest is right here, waiting for us to stop and notice. Waiting for us to come home to ourselves, and to the holy that has been here all along.

This week, I invite you to slow down.

Pause long enough to notice a bee at work, or the way the light filters through the trees on your drive home. Take a breath before you answer the next email. Sit quietly with your coffee in the morning. Let these small moments become doorways to something holy.

Because the Divine is here, right where you are, waiting to be noticed.

On this slow journey of faith with you,
Pr. Melissa

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