A year ago, I came home from the World Race. Over the last twelve months, I have struggled to process my experience overseas.
In the midst of that processing, I have come across one nagging regret. The world race is an incredible experience and it is incredibly hard to communicate how much it has impacted me. It is incredibly hard to acknowledge all of the ways that the race changed me. In the midst of all of this, I am afraid I have made a mistake. In fact, I continue to make it fairly often.
I left for the World Race in my thirties. For more than half of my life, I was immersed in a culture of expectations. Get married, have kids, buy a house. Picket fences, savings accounts, and retirement funds.
From the start, and throughout the process, I have talked about the world race as a once-in-a-lifetime trip. I have softened the explanation of this experience by saying things like, “well, it is the best time in my life to do something crazy, ya know, before I get married, have kids, settle down.”
I regret it.
I regret it because it is not true. Not that it is inaccurate; it is just not a true description of what is happening. I think I say it to help people understand why I did something so outlandish (pardon the pun). It is as if I feel like I have to apologize, or at the very least justify, why I might do something so bizarre.
The truth is this: Jesus is doing some weird stuff to me. The World Race was not a once-in-a-lifetime break from life, like a sabbatical that I will leave behind. It was a commitment to a new way of doing life. And I did not go because the timing was good. I did not go in order to stop-gap some kind of hole until I can settle down.
I went because I was called. I went out of obedience.
The truth is that Kylie and I would take our family overseas ANYTIME we feel called to go. It doesn’t really matter about mortgage payments, the age of our kids, jobs and responsibilities, stability and certainty. We want to live lives that will go anywhere and do anything as soon as the Lord beckons.
There is nothing wrong with stability. I am sure the Lord is calling a lot of wonderful disciples to picket fences and retirement funds.
But not us. The Lord is calling us to a different kind of stability. The Lord is calling us to a life of risks, a life of movement. It may look pretty unstable by the world’s standards, but it is a stability based on radical and consistent obedience, even if it means unstable geography, uncertain account balances, and penciled-in itineraries.
The good news is that this is a minor regret that can be easily rectified. So, I am sorry for the bad communication, friends and family. But these crazy decisions are going to keep on coming. The Lord has called us into a scary, beautiful, risky way of doing life, not just for a few months or a specific experience, but for good. I regret not saying so sooner.
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