A spring break trip provides a wonderful opportunity to bond together as a family. An extra-long road trip (16 hours or so for us one way this year) can provide hours and hours of time to build relationships, grow closer, and just enjoy being together. Perhaps this kind of optimism works better for a car commercial with the sentimental music playing in the background. You have seen the type of scene where the whole family gets along, sings to the radio, and laughs at the same jokes. A scene where the sun is always shining, traffic is always light, and there isn’t any road construction. Has anyone ever in the history of families truly experienced this Facebook-worthy type of road trip?
It often seems that things can start to derail with just one negative comment. After that first one, they just seem to multiply, and, before you know it, no one is happy or enjoying themselves. Where did the positive energy and loving family time go? We sometimes fail to recognize how negative comments and an overall “glass half empty” attitude can affect us and those around us. Negativity really is more like an infection that eventually consumes us if we aren’t careful.
Knowing that we were going to be spending so much time together in close quarters, my husband and I came up with a plan – a negative comment would result in the loss of a cell phone for the next 30 minutes. This applied to my husband and me as well as our kids. Granted, we knew that our teens would view it as the worst possible punishment that could ever be handed down in any situation, but it would hurt me as well (I love my phone). And although 30 minutes may not seem like a long time, it can seem like an eternity considering how tethered we (and our kids) can be to our phones.
Needless to say, it wasn’t long before we set out on our journey that phone time was taken away. First, one of our teens lost a phone and then the other. Well, this was hard. They weren’t happy with us, and we weren’t happy with them. We did manage to laugh when one of them quickly followed up a negative comment with another one (“this is a stupid rule”). However, over the next few days, a shift began to occur. Perhaps it was in-part to having more “real” time together without phones, but we all began to be happier people. A revised 2.0 kinder, gentler, loving family came about. We all became more aware of our negative comments. The sometimes sarcastic ways we would get our point across or the careless comments we might make especially during stressful moments. We all started calling each other out (in a loving way, of course) when the negativity would try to sneak back in.
A week later on the long ride home, I found myself driving with tears in my eyes thinking how great is the grace of our God. As parents, we pray for direction, for guidance, for clear cut answers. He tells us (over and over) that the greatest commandment is love. We are to love each other with the kind of love that He so freely gives to us. Our family’s positive shift allowed us to begin (again) with showing that real kind of love to each other every day in big and small ways.
Back at home, I am truly grateful for the time we had away. And although those spring break memories may be fleeting, my prayer is that the love we show to each other would constantly and consistently be modeled after the love our heavenly Father gives to us each day. Our attitude and outlook should be positive considering that we have the love of Christ in our lives. I also pray that we would share this positive outlook with others, show grace when needed, forgiveness when requested, and build people up rather than tear them down. And that our love would be extended far outside our family to a world in need.
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