Experiencing Actual Grace Was Not On Our Itinerary

The Beauty of a busy day can come in its quietest, most unplanned moments.


Today was our first full day of a family vacation. By 7:15 a.m., we left the house we are renting with friends and drove more than an hour and a half to Provincetown, Mass., at the tip of Cape Cod, arriving  for the 8:30 Mass at St. Peter the Apostle Church.

After Mass, we strolled the streets of Provincetown, ate breakfast at a busy cafe, and then headed to the top of the Pilgrim Monument, which commemorates the Mayflower Pilgrim's first landing in the New World. That happened not at Plymouth Rock, but instead in what is now Provincetown.

The rest of the day was equally full: drives through the roads that wind their ways through the Cape Cod National Seashore,  lunch and a round of minigolf on the property of the Wellfleet Drive-in Theatre. By the time we were back on the Upper Cape, we were all ready for naps.

After dark, on an hourlong walk with my husband to the beach, I asked him what was his favorite part of all our day;s adventures. "Well, right now, walking with you," he said.

"Well, OK but other than that. What was the best part of today?" I said.

He recalled a half hour or so in the late morning, when the four of us - my husband and I and our two adolescent sons, sat in the shade in Adirondack chairs, sipping bottled water and chatting about who knows what after our descent from the Pilgrim's Monument.

We were all relaxed. We talked, really, about nothing in particular. But I felt then, as he did, something  special, grace-filled even, between the four of us. I guess I would say we were present to each other without the distractions of itineraries, or cell phones or our iPads. We just were. 

“By the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace in me has not been fruitless.” (1 Cor. 15:10)