Tami's Day Off

"Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul." ~John Muir

Today was "Tami's Day Off" on my calendar. These show up monthly in my Daytimer, but I haven't been disciplined lately to actually take them. With a little planning and a lot of encouragement from my very sweet husband, I made it out the door this morning to have an entire day to myself.

After kissing the girls goodbye, loading the car with beach gear, stopping at Starbucks, I was making my way down the freeway to Orange County's Balboa Beach. It's a bit of a distance, but it's a great beach - clean, quiet, and safe- well worth the drive. I usually listen to talk radio or music while I'm driving, but today I wanted to enjoy... silence. That's rare in a household of 7 people - especially with 4 girls who love to talk!!

I had a wonderfully quiet day- sitting at the beach, watching the ocean, listening to the waves and reading the books I brought along. After a few hours in the sun by the oceanside, it was getting a little chilly and windy, so I headed back inland before the rush hour traffic. Since I wasn't ready to come home yet, I drove to another of my favorite sites- a park with hiking trails in Sierra Madre.

For the next couple of hours I sat in the woods drinking in the beauty of blue skies, towering pine trees, dappled sunshine and gentle breezes while I read, wrote, meditated, prayed, planned and savored the silence.

After my wonderfully solitary day, I'm refreshed and ready to go back to real life...

"True silence is the rest of the mind, and is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment." ~William Penn