souldare

Blessed are those whose strength is in you,
    whose hearts are set on pilgrimage. (Psalm 84:5 NIV)

I often set myself little goals, like blogging about our recent adventure once a week. My intention was to post on Mondays. And, here it is Thursday! But setting the intention actually lent itself to a sort of success. Here I am blogging away, and honestly on Monday, I didn’t know what part of the adventure to highlight. In general, I offer a chronological viewpoint, but themes emerge and that’s what I usually chase, when I consider my blog material.

So now that I’ve given you a behind the scenes glimpse of my train of thought, while keeping up with my blogging goals, let’s get back to the Intuition, and our summer voyage upon the Upper Mississippi River.

We arrived at the Watergate Marina.

We chose to explore the northern Mississippi to avoid the hot and humid weather between Chicago and St. Louis. Without a doubt, we missed out on the hottest part of summer, but the temps in St. Paul were plenty warm.

Once we parked our boat in the marina slip assigned to us, Les made arrangements to get new tires for our trailer. It’s much easier to change tires with the boat OFF the trailer. Fortunately, a local place was able to do the work for us the same afternoon that we arrived. While Les went to get the tires, I puttered and set up the “cabin” for our cruise.

My intention for this trip was to UNPLUG. I brought my journal and art supplies,as well as books to read. I left the laptop and iPad at home. I did bring my phone, but I planned to use the radio for music and my digital camera to take photos.

Here’s a note from my journal about my intention, as well as lyrics I wrote down. The song played on the local radio station, while I puttered. It was as if the songwriter knew exactly how I was feeling. I was tired.

The lyrics of the song tapped into some part of me that I wasn’t really in tune with before we left on the trip. Vacations have a way of opening up my soul and giving me time and space to reflect. I’m not sure now looking back if I was really mad, but I must admit there’s usually some latent anger lurking below the surface of my life. I can’t really explain it, but it’s just there. Unmet expectations. Frustrated plans. Even when everything is smooth sailing on the surface, turbulence exists in my soul.

It’s not good or bad, nor right or wrong. It just there. I needed time to let the pressure to ease off and rest. And the song gave words to my unspoken weariness.

Now that we were settled into the marina, my intention was to UNPLUG.

Come back next week, and see how my intention took a strange turn for the best.

How does setting an intention work for you?

Set a timer for 5 minutes and complete this prompt: “I intend . . .” I would love to hear what you discover.