Nook, Book, Look

To add to the fun of being in Orlando for a couple of days to see my youngest boy graduate, my husband booked us rooms in an Embassy Suites Hotel, a family favorite. When the kids were little they considered this place hide-and-seek heaven, with all the rooms on the multiple floors overlooking a beautiful enclosed atrium. The glass elevators were perfect for spotting siblings hiding behind posts on various floors or dashing in-between tables and wingback chairs. For me, the attraction has always been the beauty of the place, the sound of the constantly running water, and palm trees rising out of the mass of vegetation, ever reaching for the blue sky visible through the sun roof above. The first thing I did after dropping our bags in our room was to lean over the railing and start looking for my morning nook…that special chair or bench tucked away in a corner where I could enjoy the early morning hours with my first cup of coffee of the day while my family slept them away. I found it in a long, padded bench that I’m sitting on sideways with my back against a post, facing a particularly lovely view of a little waterfall, my coffee on the ledge beside me within easy reach. Perfect!

My favorite author, John Grisham, is a prolific writer who seems to put out a new literary treasure every time we’re thinking of leaving town. True to form, Calico Joe, a baseball story this time, appeared on the store shelves just as I was starting to think about packing my bags. I quickly grabbed a copy and put it aside, the first item to later go in the suitcase. Once purchased, the cover of the vacation read of choice is never cracked until the holiday is actually underway, the anticipation a big part of the enjoyment. I love the paradox of being sucked into a good book just when most of the minutes of my day are scheduled with vacation activities and reading time is scarce. Then even the idle moments of the day are filled with delight as I use them to get a few pages farther into the story. Today I’m three-fifths of the way through the vacation and two-thirds of the way through the book, enjoying both immensely and trying to slow the passage of time any way I can.

There‘s plenty to look at while in town. We attended a showing of the projects the students have been working on in the time they’ve spent at the school. Not one to get lost in nostalgia, however, my son is focused instead on the start of the next stage of his life. It’s a time of looking ahead with great expectation and joy.

When you’re as happy at the end of a vacation as you are when it starts it could be that your joy springs not just from the trip itself but rather what you find in your heart…through a habit of spending time in a cozy nook with the best of Books, and looking For God every step of life along the way.

“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life”
(1 John 1:1 NKJV)