A friend shared with me that she likes to ask other travelers why they’re traveling. She says usually the traveler is yearning and searching for more. She likes to use what they say to correlate back to why she travels; which is to find more of Christ and share Christ with other people.
That idea really stuck with me. I started seeing the same thing with people I met. Whether they had been traveling a long time or were new to travel, I saw that most were trying to see a bigger picture of the world; to find more excitement in life outside of their regular mundane world that seemed dry and still. Having traveled a lot myself, I could understand why traveling could fill those desires to find more in their life. Traveling can provide adrenaline, excitement, newness, and a sense of freedom from cultural norms and expectations. But that excitement and freedom feelings are temporal and fleeting. They can go away the moment one returns to their ‘normal life’. Thinking of all this made me think, ‘OK, why do they travel. What are they really searching for? And why do I travel? What am I searching for?’
I had to look back to my own travel experiences to realize that I have done the same. I thought back to my third year at university. I studied abroad in Barcelona for the entire school year. I was gone nine months and traveled to many different parts of Europe. I wouldn’t have been able to say this then, but I was searching for something while I was in Spain. I would have said that my motives were to see and experience other cultures and that was true, but also underneath that, unbeknownst to me, I was searching for purpose, something more to life, and to feel alive.
Now I had an amazing time in Spain! I learned a ton about life, cultures, traveling, politics and much more. I had many fun adventures and made many new friends. But I came home never having found what I was looking for. I came home and it was hard. Hard to transition back into American culture. And underneath all that transition I was still searching for something. I felt numb, maybe even more numb than before I left. Whatever I found in Spain that filled that void that I was searching for, I didn’t return with it, it didn’t stay. That’s probably why a lot of travelers get addicted to travel. Because of those feelings that they feel when they travel (excitement, life, adrenaline, freedom). But when they return it’s not there anymore; which leads them to go travel more.
After I graduated I started working in Washington DC. It was there that I found God. I call it my ‘Come to Jesus Moment’. I noticed that everyone I was working with worked hard and was ‘successful’ as the world deems ‘successful’ but they hated life! No one liked their job, everyone was stressed, everyone was riddled with insecurities, depression, and greed. At that point I felt I had been lied to by our whole society. It tells us go to school, get good grades and then we’ll have a good job and we’ll be happy and fulfilled. But then one gets there and they’re not fulfilled and they haven’t found that purpose nor freedom.
I remember laying on my bed one night when it all just hit me. If there is a God, which I know at this point there is, and what God said is true, then this is the most important thing in the world! This has to be the meaning of life. This Creator and what he has for me must be what’s important, not what the world tells me is important. (Getting a good job and get married, have babies, be successful.) So I started to look into what God says is the purpose of life and how to find that purpose and meaning.
At that moment, I decided to move back in with my family, who were living in Boise, Idaho at the time. I call me two years in Boise my ‘spiritual rehab’ time. I didn’t want just a religion because I’d already tried the religion thing for twenty something years. I sought to actually have Jesus in my life and actually know him and connect with him in a spiritual way. I learned so much about who God is and what he has done for me and also that he wants to be an active part of my life!
I learned that my purpose was to love God and to be loved by God. Before I felt that I had to get my life together first and follow all the ‘rules’ of religion before God could love me. But that is simply not true! God loves me, faults and all! With that realization I could live in peace, feeling loved, adored and cared for. I didn’t live with shame or guilt. And I wasn’t carrying the pressures and stress that comes with trying to be ‘successful’ by society’s standards. My purpose is to love God and love others. That is so simple and something I can do.
After finding such infinite and meaningful purpose in God I still had a desire to travel. I recognize that I left on my first World Race because I really wanted to act on what I learned; I wanted to share the purpose I found. I found meaning, purpose, love and more freedom than I ever found in traveling alone.
A friend of mine has a tattoo on her arm with the phrase, “Not all who wander are lost”. In the Christian terminology the term ‘lost’ can represent people who don’t know Jesus. When I first thought about this phrase I thought, ‘yeah, I’m wandering around this world but I’m not lost’. But then I realized that yes, though I am not ‘lost’ as in I don’t know Jesus, I am still ‘lost’ to some things that God still has for me. Maybe some truths and revelations that I still don’t understand, healing in a particular area of my life, or maybe even my purpose in Christ’s Kingdom. I now realize that I am still searching for something. I am searching for more of God. I’m still wandering this earth, soul searching for more of God, more of Jesus, more of his character his love, and understanding of who he is and what he’s doing here on this earth. So though not all who wander are lost, most are. Maybe they are asking themselves, ‘there must be more than this?’ or they have found that purpose in Christ but they’re still wanting more. God is infinite, there will always be more of Him for us to find.
This made me really be able to connect with the travelers I met. I understand it. I’ve done it. I’m still doing it. Maybe on a different level and in a different way. But realizing that I have gone looking for freedom and purpose before in my life through travel, makes me want to pull the traveler higher. For them to know that they cannot find what they’re looking for in the physical outward world; adventure, excitement, cultures, alcohol, sex, clubbing, beaches, elephants, babies, or whatever else. We must all go inward, beyond the physical. That true purpose and fulfillment comes from the spiritual; by being completely loved and accepted by God which allows us to accept ourselves, where we are, flaws and all.
We cannot find fulfillment on this earth alone. Without Jesus, without looking inward at our hearts and realizing what’s broken and that Jesus and his love is the only thing that can fix that, we will always be trying to fill that void. Trying to answer that question, ‘there must be more to life than this’.
This is the hardest thing for me to portray to my fellow travelers and friends about my past year and half of travels. I’ve seen more than thirty countries and I’ve learned a lot because of that. But the biggest thing I learned is that God loves me, accepts me and wants to be a part of my life in an every day connection. A spiritual connection with His Holy Spirit living in me, speaking to me daily and reminding me of my purpose; to be loved. When we have this, we start to wander with purpose. Our purpose is to find more of God and that’s a beautiful thing because he’s everywhere!
When we travel like this we don’t come home void or feeling that we need to go out again to be whole. We go out again to spread that wholeness that we’ve found. I think that is the beauty of not all who wander are lost, but most are. That it’s OK to be lost in Christ.
