Hotel Fantasies

 Hotel Fantasies

There were nights when Erin and I used to look at each other across the chaos- kids, bills, headlines, no jobs and whisper the same forbidden four letter word: hotel.

Not Paris. Not Bali. Not some five-star spa retreat with infinity pools. No. A Hampton Inn off the highway would’ve done it. The dream was not luxury. The dream was silence.

We’d picture it together: walking into a room with freshly folded sheets, the air conditioner set to “arctic tundra,” blackout curtains pulled tight. 

Nobody needing us. 

Nobody judging us. 

Just us- horizontal, still, maybe holding hands under a comforter that definitely hadn’t been washed in enough bleach.

Sometimes the fantasy included room service. Not steak or champagne. Chicken fingers and French Fries for Erin.  A Coke with too much ice. Cereal for me. Food we didn’t have to cook, clean, or defend from our kids

And sometimes the fantasy was separate. Erin in her room, me in mine. Not because we didn’t love each other, but because love can get tired too. Because sometimes the most romantic thing you can give someone is their own remote and a Do Not Disturb sign.

People imagine escape as tropical beaches. We imagined escape as two keycards.

We never booked it. Not once. We were too busy, too broke, too guilty. But in our minds, those hotel rooms kept us alive. A reminder that rest is holy, silence is medicine, and sometimes salvation looks less like a mountaintop and more like a Econo Lodge with decent Wi-Fi.

“Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.”

       -Mark 6:31