Spring break often brings anticipation — travel plans, family bonding, and time away from daily routines. But it can also bring tension, exhaustion, misunderstandings, and unexpected disruptions.

In this episode, we talk about preparing our hearts — not just packing our bags. Whether your plans involve a staycation or a getaway, the real goal isn’t a perfect trip. It’s loving one another well in the middle of it.

Through Scripture, we’re reminded that even the bumps, delays, and disagreements can produce growth, peace, and deeper connection when Christ remains at the center.

What We Discuss

• Why family trips can magnify both joy and tension

• How to respond when plans fall apart

• Choosing perspective over frustration

• Practicing humility and patience in close quarters

• Allowing challenges to strengthen — not strain — relationships

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Full Transcript Below:

Preparing Our Hearts for Spring Break

By Lynette Kittle

Bible Reading:

“No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” - Hebrews 12:11

It’s that time of year again when our minds start thinking about spring break and where our families will plan to spend it. Whether it’s a staycation close to home or at the beach, the mountains, an amusement park, or on an island paradise, it’s about loving and enjoying our families.

Gratefully, our family has experienced wonderful spring break getaways where everything went well, but we’ve also waded through difficult and challenging ones where everything seemed to fall apart, no one seemed to get along, the influenza hit us, we ran out of gas in the desert, traffic was chaotic, and travel didn’t go the way we planned.

During times like these, when it’s easy for emotions to run wild and feelings to easily get hurt, we want to remember what Colossians 3:12-13 urges, “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.  Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”

Spring Break Bumps

Although issues often arise during family getaways, they don’t have to color our experience and memories negatively. We can ask God to help us put situations into perspective, letting go of the less-than-pleasant and holding onto the warm and loving moments.

We don’t have to allow life’s displeasures to take away from the joy of being with one another and spending time together, despite the circumstances, through thick and thin, the fun and not-so-fun moments.

Rather than letting various difficulties and challenges ruin our time together, we can view them as bumps in our relationships, with the opportunity to learn how to walk through disputes and disruptions with God’s grace and forgiveness. We can be determined not to let challenging moments define our time together.

As the Apostle Paul urges us in Philippians 2:3-4, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility, value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.”

Hearts Open to Growth

During spring break, we can look to God to help us learn, grow, and even discover joy in the middle of mishaps, troubles, and difficulties. Paul reminds us in Romans 8:18: “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”

When we are willing to set our minds on it, we can trust God to work the hardships, difficulties, and disagreements together for our good by bringing us closer together with a common goal of making it through whatever is happening, drawing us closer to one another, and growing together rather than further apart.

1 Peter 1:6 reminds us that, “In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.”

Delight Over Despair

Spending time together as a family is often where everyone’s weaknesses flare up, fueled by spending a non-stop week together, instead of us all going our own ways for school, work, and church. During concentrated time together, it doesn’t take long for our frailties and faults to rear their ugly heads.

Rather than feel despair when spring break misunderstandings and disappointments happen, Paul encourages us in 2 Corinthians 12:10, “That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

Instead of being in despair over them, we can believe it gives God the opportunity to show Himself strongly in our lives, including our families’ lives.

With Christ as the center of our lives, Paul, who definitely knew what it was like to experience difficulties, weaknesses, and challenges in his life, reminds us in 2 Corinthians 4:8-9 that when “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair;  persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.”

Intersecting Faith & Life:

Before spending spring break as a family, gather together to pray for God to prepare your hearts to be loving and kind to each other during your extended family time. As well, discuss beforehand how God can help you to be patient and long-suffering with each other during your time together.

Further Reading:

15 Spring Break Trips that Are Budget and Family Friendly

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