Usually January is our month to spend a week in some sunny place with our friends Ed and Janet. We call them our “foxhole buddies” and they refer to us the same way. These are the people you would want in a foxhole with you... friends you can count on to defend you and “have your back” if the need arises. If you have friends like that, you know how important and precious they are.

Can a week be relaxing and exhausting at the same time? Ours was. It was pretty cold and very rainy for the first three days of our stay. So on Saturday we played Mexican Train and saw a movie—It’s Complicated. Although I don’t like Alec Baldwin AT ALL and frankly, I saw a whole lot more of him in this movie than anyone should ever have to see, all in all, the movie was pretty good. When it came down to the end, I thought it showed pretty well how cheating (even when it results in all kinds of movie hilarity) ends up hurting everyone, especially the innocent bystanders. And really, can watching Meryl Streep act ever be bad? I think not.

Sunday morning we spent in worship... just the four of us, reading some Scripture, praying, and having some great conversation about trusting God in everything. Ed and Janet have had some great experiences in the last year in seeing God’s mercy and watching His plans fall into place int their life. It was neat to listen to their story and to share some of our own.

Sunday afternoon while John and Ed froze to death on a golf course, Janet and I sat in a Starbucks at a mall and watched the people.

More rain on Monday sent us to a movie... an I-Max showing of Avatar. Visually, this movie is like nothing I’ve ever seen, and the story is hard to resist even if it does stretch all credibility toward the end. Still the special effects... holy moley! And one thing that will always suck me into a movie is a section where the “fish out of water” manages to adapt and learn and even excel in a totally different life than he’s known before. Avatar sure does satisfy on that score.

If our first three days of vacation were low-key, we made up for it on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, which we spent at The Magic Kingdom, Epcot, and Universal Studios. We walked and walked and walked and walked. And ate. And rode things. And saw interesting, strange, and outrageous people.

I love roller coasters. I’m scared to death of heights, but I love roller coasters. So I got a big healthy dose... first on Space Mountain and the Runaway Mine Train at the Magic Kingdom, and then on three different crazy coasters at Universal Studios. The most intense one—The Incredible Hulk—gave me a big surprise half-way up the first hill. Instead of climbing slowly to the top, all of a sudden, it accelerated and shot us out of a tunnel over the first crest, and didn’t stop until the very end.

Scarier than the coasters was Dr. Doom’s Fearfall, where you are rocketed 150 feet straight up and then free-fall back down. I have this nightmare about once a year that I am in an elevator that goes through the roof of a building and just keeps going up, and I’m afraid Dr. Doom’s Fearfall just made that a whole lot worse.

The scariest ride of anything we did... the one I will never go on again... the one that made me truly sick... was Mission: Space - Advanced Training Lab in Epcot. Oh sure, there were all kinds of warnings... no pregnant women or people with heart conditions, yadda, yadda, yadda. They just say all that stuff to protect themselves against lawsuits, right?

Oh my gosh. I don’t know what they did in the darkness of the little car I was in, but when the five-minute “ride” ended, I felt like, to quote Brian Regan, everything on the inside of my body wanted to be on the outside of my body. I had to lie down and close my eyes all through the 45-minute Universe of Energy show and ride and just pray that I didn’t throw up. I’m not a wuss, but I wouldn’t recommend Mission: Space to anybody.

Our favorite things at Epcot:

The Test Track

The American Experience

Voices of Liberty

the French restaurant

the French bakery

the China Pavillion and movie

So... I’m back in Nashville this week, excited and ready to write. I met someone today who is just getting started writing. He asked if after all this time I still love writing.

Yes. I still love it. Can’t wait to see what I write this week!