I am taking the kids on a short trip out of town up to the mountains to go camping this weekend. It’s kind of a vacation, but a pretty short one.

When I asked the kids about what they wanted to do or where they wanted to go during the summer break, they all immediately said they wanted to go camping. We got a new tent for Christmas and we went to a lake in a national forest last year so this year I thought it might be fun to go find somewhere with a little more elevation, where we could beat the heat some and maybe do some hiking.

Camping mostly requires a lot of preparation. You are leaving the comforts and familiarity of home to stay outside in nature for two or three nights. Even a two-night stay out in the wilderness takes a lot of work to get things ready. You need to plan out every meal, find suitable snacks that won’t go bad during the trip. You need to check all of your equipment and remind yourself what you might have run out of last time and need to replenish or what might have gotten broken sitting in the shed all year. You try to plan out and think of everything that you might need or you forgot to bring last time so you are not caught without something you really need while on the trip.

The kids, all they have to worry about is packing for a few nights away. Some t-shirts, shorts and a hoodie. They basically just show up and they don’t care what it took to get there.

This time we will not be able to have a campfire because of the drought here and bans on any open flames. So I bought a butane stove and a few canisters of butane to cook our meals. Making s’mores could be an adventure on its own this year. Knowing that we have the stove and struggling in past to ensure that meals came out the way I’d hoped in previous camping trips, this year I decided to make meals ahead of time and freeze them so that they last longer in the cooler and then we can pop them on the stove at the right time to get them warmed up. Hopefully, this is a little lower risk than trying to make something with limited supplies in the field.

Tonight before the kids headed to bed, I was making breakfast burritos in advance. Something I can throw on the cast iron skillet to heat up and have some yummy breakfast meals each morning to start the day off right. For three breakfasts for four people, that is a lot of burritos to make in advance. I found an amazing recipe for the self-proclaimed “best breakfast burritos” which also promised to be easy to store, freeze and reheat. In order to make twelve of these burritos I doubled the recipe, so it was some effort to make these in advance.

Now that everyone is asleep and most of my preparations are in full-swing for the trip, I feel content. I am excited for the trip and all the memories we will make and the experiences we will have, but I am content because I feel good about all the work I put into it. Those burritos are going to be delicious and gone in less than 60 seconds each morning. I enjoy cooking even if I am never going to be the best cook or chef. What I enjoy most about cooking is that you put in time and effort, you find an awesome recipe, you go and get the supplies, sometimes you improvise or add in something to give it that extra kick, but that whole effort is an act of love for someone else. You do all this work to feed someone, to surprise someone with the taste, to satisfy an essential need that we all have at least three times a day, sometimes more often than that. For someone to leave the table feeling full, in their belly but also in their heart. Even if they don’t even recognize it.

In my house, it is rare that we eat out. Maybe a night or two in a month, sometimes less often than that. My mom brought over some new pillows that she was getting rid of for us to use because the state of some of my kids pillows are quite misshapen. LOL. But when my mom suggested to my kids that they get rid of their pillows for these new ones, they were disgusted.

“No!” they said. “We like our pillows. They smell like Dad.”

It was a funny moment where we joked, “What, does he sleep in your bed when you’re not here?”

“They smell like his smell. They smell like the detergent he uses.”

I could only smile. I would like to think that yes, their pillows smell like the detergent I use, but also, that they smell like the home-cooked food I make almost every night they are with me at my house. We have baked ziti some nights and chicken tikka masala other nights. I make a mean turkey chili that everyone loves. I make tacos, enchiladas, even a taco lasagna. And tonight it was breakfast burritos.

One of my favorite smells is coming home after work or going to the store, and when I come in, the house smells like a meal I made earlier that day or the night before. You can’t smell it unless you leave the house and come back in. If you are just there, you can’t tell that it smells like anything.

All that to say, reflecting on my day, my night cooking a meal that we can’t even enjoy yet, I was completely content. (They did eat all the leftover eggs, potatoes, even a couple of pieces of bacon that weren’t used in the burritos I made). I do believe one day another person will come into my life and we will start our own new journey together, but I am not wasting these days, these short summers, these times I have with just me and my kids. I am still raising these kids. I am still cherishing my time I have to be a father with them. It is the greatest ride I could ever have hoped for.

– Jason

“But godliness with contentment is great gain.” 1 Timothy 6:6 (NIV)