My husband and I started a tradition several years ago: We took a long weekend away by ourselves 3-4 weeks before leading our mission trip—to pray for the trip, take care of details, and just rejuvenate. We decided to take our RV to Walleye Park. Yes, we prayed for the mission trip, but we also enjoyed fishing together, reading books, and sitting by the campfire.
Here are 10 decisions to make when planning your own retreat:
1. Decide Who
Will this be a solo retreat? For you and your spouse? For your prayer group?
2. Decide on Your Focus
We needed a time of preparation for leading the mission tip. You might want to focus on your marriage, your parenting, a career change, starting a new business, reassessing the family schedule, etc. What has God placed on your heart that needs some intense focus?
Caution: choose one or two main goals. We could not plan the entire mission trip. We focused on schedules and logistics. You cannot fix every frustration in your marriage. Focus on planning date nights or working on communication. You may get more accomplished, but you will feel more successful if you at least finish those two main goals.
3. Decide Where
We chose camping in our fifth wheel. However, you could easily find a house on VRBO or AirBnB that would work as well. I would suggest finding somewhere and hour or two away from home—far enough to feel like you are going somewhere, but not so far it takes too much time away from your focus.
4. Decide on Supplies
For our mission trip, part of what we needed to do was to figure out team rotations for the week for 35-40 people. We needed to have a list of participants, knowledge of their skills/gifts, a schedule of team projects, etc. If you are going over your family budget and making priorities, then you need to have information about how much money is coming in, what your expenses have been, etc. Will you need the internet access?
We pack our RV with food. If you are going to a house or cabin, decide on meals in advance and make a grocery list. Do you want to go out to eat?
5. Decide on Fun Activities
In between planning, we go fishing on the lake, roast marshmallows or play a board game. You might go hiking, visit a museum, or have a picnic in a park somewhere. Is there a local restaurant you want to try?
6. Decide Your God Focus
Some mornings we get up early and fish. It is easy for me to talk to God or pray as I sit there waiting for a nibble. Other mornings we each have our individual devotional times. I take a journal and a Bible. My husband uses Logos(a Bible study program) and watches videos from Dallas Theological Seminary on his computer. My husband also brings his guitar, and we sing worship songs together. Also, we would pray before starting our discussions about trip logistics.
7. Decide About Children and Pets
When we started this tradition, our children spanned the ages of middle school to college. They were responsible, but that was another reason we chose somewhere fairly close to home. We stocked up on food for them, made sure transportation for activities was covered, etc.
If you have smaller children, you will need to arrange a weekend at grandma or grandpa’s house. If, like us, you do not have grandparents nearby, is there another family you could swap with? Could you plan it around an event your children have? Maybe 2 of your children are going on a band trip or a discipleship retreat for a weekend. Use that weekend to go on your retreat.
Make provisions for your pets if you have them.
8. Decide the Schedule, or Not
Although you can certainly map out a schedule for the retreat, we have chosen to take a much looser approach. My husband and I are both first born list makers, so we just typically have a list of what we want to accomplish, but don’t dictate exactly when we will do it. The weather sometimes dictates the schedule. One weekend we did not get to go fishing because it rained the entire time we were there!
9. Decide to Eliminate Distractions
Do you spend too much time on your phone? Is internet a problem? Will you have so much fun camping, you don’t discuss what you need to? How will you handle those issues?
10. Decide About Covid-19 Precautions
For now, Covid-19 is still a concern. Once again, traveling in our own RV eliminates sanitation issues. if you are renting a house or cabin, check their sanitation routines. Bring along any supplies you might need for that.
If you are renting a cabin, house or using an RV, then social distancing is easy. Fishing on the lake doesn’t involve interacting with anyone else. If you are choosing activities like museums, think through times to go. Check with the site to see any Covid modifications they have made about times or other restrictions. If you are eating out, do they have outdoor seating? take-out?
We love our yearly retreat. Even though we had to cancel the mission trip this year because of Covid, we still scheduled our retreat. Our empty nest had refilled with our children either working or schooling from home, which was wonderful. However, this gave us a chance to just reconnect and breathe a little bit. I hope this gives you some ideas to schedule your own retreat!