Below is a piece I wrote for Lynchburg Living magazine. Thought it needed a re-work and some new readers. Here it is:

One Saturday in early summer, I took my family on a day-trip to the Blue Ridge Mountains. No real plans, entirely spontaneous; just laugh, play, be together and hopefully put my mind in neutral. We packed a lunch that morning and piled in the van and drove west on 221 towards Bedford. The day changed everything for me… I mean everything.

I should confess some things. There’s a tendency I succumb to that many mistake as heroic, but it’s a flaw anyway you play it: I am a Work Junkie. And right then all my internal gauges were screaming out this forewarning: Stop! End the big rush to get to the next ministry challenge. I had grown tired of the cell phone, texts, emails and deadlines that lurked behind warmed over promises, “I’ll be there in a minute, kids.” Most of me knew I was missing a bigger point; that I had the Work Junkie trapped inside and he always wanted to take over the show. But maybe, I thought, higher ground can sift through my humanity and get to deeper roots. So I headed for the hills to put the Junkie back in his place and let God’s Spirit speak to me antidotally.

We drove with the windows down to let Virginia come in. Livestock and compost are pungent and the smell wafts through like a state fair. Willow trees and corn bristle the farmlands from Forest to Cifax and then on to Bedford. It’s an earthy and scruffy Virginia; its well-worn boots hung in the barn. The contours of this terrain get to me though, possess me and conjure up boyhood naivety. I guess there’s a Lassie episode in all of us and suddenly I’m envisioning the good collie and me helping Pa save the family farm a thousand times on this drive.

Anyway, my children—all under 9 years old—point and speak about the gritty world outside. My wife and I fall silent. Nothing harsh is between us. She must have realized I sought a voice stronger than our own, so she just let me escape into the wind gust and topography. I did seek a voice, but it wasn’t Dr. Phil or the Appalachian Guru Ninja (“Hey, Grasshopper! How’s the rat race workin’ for ya?”). No, a wiser, more primitive voice was needed, the Holy Spirit.

Our pursuit brought us to a mountain creek right off the Parkway, a natural water-park cut with wading pools and mini falls. No overpriced t-shirts or two hour lines at this park, just a lot of time to get lost in the organic. We descended the creek little by little at first, jumping rocks to keep dry, but gain confidence and pace as we continue down. Soon, we just got wet. I caught myself having fun and forgetting about deadlines and being somebody else’s “hero.”

But suddenly, the Junkie tried to take over. “Who can I call or text right now? How can I get productive?” I think my wife spotted him first, because she gave me that look. The kids shouted, “Look at this! Look at me!” I faked delight and said, “Yea, yea, that’s great. Let’s keep moving.” The look, again. Fading, I would soon slip into work mode—like a wannabe family man—and miss the splendor of right now. But my wife is a genius and she did what any crafty woman might do.

“Here, take our picture,” she said and handed me the camera. The hand-off startled me. “I don’t want to carry this,” I thought. “I can’t get to my phone if it rings.”

The look changed. Now it said, “Please remove the scowl and take a picture of your children and their mother posing on a rock, and try to enjoy it.” My wife told the kids to smile while Daddy took a picture. I framed the shot—mother and children with arms around shoulders and making funny faces. Snap. The shot digitized gradually, so I waited for the preview in the tiny LCD screen. I lingered and hoped it was good, scrapbookable perhaps. The shot finally crystallized, and as it did, a voice came to me, something like this.

“You’ll never get this moment back again,” the voice said. “You’ll always have work that you presume takes precedent, but you’re wrong.” I knew where this was going, so I braced for impact. “These children,” the voice pounded, “they’ll grow up and you’ll grow old. And then you’ll wish yourself right back here in this cold, Virginia creek again, to splash and climb and be together.”

The outcomes seemed unavoidable to me: relish these moments or regret it. “What’s it going to be?”

I drew the cell phone from my pocket. It signaled a new text message loitered inside.
“What’s it going to be?”

The scene of me in the water and rocks, holding a camera in one hand, a phone in the other and my family ready for a second take, was Biblical.

“What’s it going to be?”

The action was swift. I flipped the phone, killed the power and sunk it in my pocket for good. The Junkie fled and I took pictures the rest of the day. My mountain creek intervention was really only a beginning. I guess that’s how it works; a moment of clarity is ordained and puts life back in the right drawers, but it can always get mixed up again if you’re not careful. That’s why I have to always get to higher ground and seek wiser voices.