Traveling as Time of Renewal

I just spent a month away from home, a length of time I have never traveled in my entire life. I have gone away [image error]
for three weeks but saying "a month" feels much longer than "three weeks."

At the final Mass we attended, this one in Washington, DC., before pointing the car west toward New Mexico, one of the prayers for the faithful caught my attention. It was that "travelers may find their time away one of renewal" because they aren't in their routines and are free from the worries of home.

That's exactly what this trip has been to me. I honestly wasn't hugely excited to leave home for a month because it meant being away from all the traditional things I love about summer in Albuquerque– the dry heat, my pool. And it meant a month away from my dogs.