Halftime

It’s officially half-time. We have been on the road for 5 ½ months, halfway through an 11-month journey. I started this journey full of ambition.  Ambition to reach a goal, ambition to do something big and something a little bit scary.  Choosing not to work, choosing to leave a comfortable home.  Choosing to leave friends and routine.  I am a planner by nature but choosing to take this trip was choosing not to plan, to let a little serendipity run across my days. 

I say this using the pronoun “I” because a trip intended to center on “us” has in many ways become a personal trip for each of us.  Each of us is experiencing life in different ways than before.   My days used to be ruled by my calendar – each day planned out often in 30-minute increments.  Rushing, always rushing.  An endless series of meetings designed to deliver, to accomplish, to assess, to direct, to decide.  Not enough reading, listening, mulling.  It would be easy to say that my career forced the rushing.  But that isn’t true.  I am a rusher who has chosen to work where rushing was valued.  I am a rusher at home too.  Always a series of projects and errands and gatherings.  Even my garden, a source of quiet and pleasure, is occasionally subject to rushing.  Rushing to plant, impatient for harvest.

Rushing isn’t always a bad thing.  I get a lot done.  But this trip makes me wonder if too often rushing has precluded intentionality.  This isn’t one of those life epiphanies.  Nothing that dramatic, just a nudge.  A little push to think more deeply about what I want out of life. As I watch Dan and Ava and Hazel I see that same nudge manifesting in their experiences too.  The girls are probably too young to see the nudge for what it is, but it’s there just the same.

The “us” part of this trip is the blessing I hoped it would be.  Managing to find fun in mundane moments, watching the girls marvel at the wonders of the United States, laughing at their antics, experiencing the makings of new inside family jokes.  Answering questions that come up in the quiet moments – quiet moments that didn’t always exist at home.  The “us” part, the reason we did this in the first place, is our reward for stepping into the unknown.

As we head west and move into the last half of this trip, I am wondering about our return to the “real world.”  I don’t know what that looks like, perhaps 5 more months on the road will bring a little clarity.  Whether it does or not, if I end the trip with more clarity or less, I will be grateful for this trip.  Grateful to grab as much of life as possible!