Giving, and Taking

Even I would have to admit that I don't always project the sunniest of dispositions. I'm not necessarily 100% John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band, but I do tend towards the theory that not only is the glass half-empty, but the milk is probably spoiled anyway.

Regardless, I don't think I'm being unjustifiably negative when I say that one of the parts of the year that really puts me through the wringer is vacation. I'm not talking about the physical toll of travel, or the financial drain, or the difficulties of enforced togetherness/small spaces; it's probably more self-inflicted than that. And this has been very much on my mind -- pressing down hard on my mind -- since we just did our 3-day Winter Vacation Trip last week.

I don't know whether it's genetic (a Guy Thing?) or learned, emotional or strictly mental, or even pathological, but I take a huge burden on myself whenever we travel. I spend loads of time before the fact, planning and researching, scheduling Fun Activities for the Whole Family, looking for that hotel room that's 10% nicer for $5 less -- then, of course, getting everything mapped out to the last possible turn (this time, I had 3 pages of printed directions... which I basically ignored in favor of the more, you know, electronic guidance of the GPS).

The day arrives and I am, ah... not bubbly... as I'm trying to get the last details nailed down and get us out the door On Schedule. I do virtually all the driving -- not because my wife won't, or because I don't trust her to, but because it just feels right to me to carry the load. I am in general a pretty confident, and I believe competent, driver; but always in the back of my mind is that we could get lost or break down or have an accident.

If one of the stops doesn't come off, if the targeted Children's Museum turns out to be a ball pit and a card table with a box of broken crayons on it, if somebody gets a lousy meal... all of that feels like a personal failure to me.

I'm sure a lot of that sounds like egomania -- making it all about me -- or some kind of messiah and/or martyr complex. Rationally I do know that plenty of stuff can go wrong that I have absolutely no control over, and I recognize that nobody's waiting to point the finger at me just because the thermostat doesn't work in the hotel room.

But in the midst of all that burden I felt myself carrying the past couple of weeks, I also realized that there's a healthy lesson to be learned as well, and it's this: there are times that it's more blessed to take than to give. That is, I realized that what I was doing, at least in part, was living out the role of Head of the Household (now there's a term you don't hear much these days, at least in a non-census sense) in the way it's really intended: not giving orders, but taking responsibility.

The New Testament talks about the man being the head of the woman, which is a concept that got twisted so far in a particular (and particularly uncomfortable) direction that I think it eventually went SPROINNGGG! and flew off behind the couch or something. Or at least we'd like to hide it there. But I think the real point of being the "head" is that I can serve my family by being the buffer zone, getting out front, taking the blow if necessary.

As it turned out, the vacation came off fine -- a couple complaints from the GPS, but nothing that couldn't be resolved by circling the block. So I can look at it as a lot of worrying for nothing, or I can see careful planning and concern for my family's well-being paying off.

And isn't it interesting that God can take "character flaws" and use them for positive purposes?