I was fifteen the first time I wrote about life being a journey. I remember feeling so pleased with myself. Like I had unlocked a mysterious secret key to life’s treasure map. Like I could navigate the rest of my life so much more assuredly, avoiding potholes, avoiding being lost. Ideals are so crystal clear at fifteen years old. Part of this youthful discovery wasn't wrong. Life IS a journey. It's so much more than a destination. It's all the travel and adventure and people encountered along the way. But a much larger part of my discovery was mired in the naïveté of innocence. Of being fifteen. Avoiding potholes? Impossible, no matter how accurate a map. Getting lost? You can't tell a fifteen year old that you can arrive at your planned destination and realize you are more lost than could never be imagined. I can't deny that I don't still love a good map. I like to know the layout of the land. I like surveying the landscape so I can orient myself. But in the passing years I've learned to appreciate a map without relying on it. I've embraced detours. The pure and unbridled ecstasy of the unforeseen. I'm loving the journey, my journey, in a way I wish I could have appreciated at 15. My husband, Brent, and I have never been afraid of changing directions. A huge change of direction brought us together. For years we changed course almost on a whim, embracing possibilities and new adventures. Exploring unknown places, making lifelong friends. From one coast to the other, spots in between. It never felt scary. Just fresh. New. Vital. Kids came along. They turned out pretty cute. We found out that adventures were not only found in new places. Being a parent. There are no guidebooks for that. We loved it.
Jobs came and went. The years piled on to years. We were happy. Less adventurous. More tied to schedules. Commitments. Obligations. We liked the people we were traveling life with but the road was monotonous. And how did we end up on a road? We'd always been more of the off-road type. I could feel us beginning to bristle under the strain of.... normalcy. And suddenly the greatest detour/pothole/destination you never. Ever. Want. Cancer raised its ugly, hated, feared head. It's there, appearing and burning your maps to dust, laughing in the face of your journey, threatening everything you hold dear. I hold dear. Because it's no longer someone else. It's no longer a third-person-narrative. It's real. It's me. My journey. Threatened, probably, possibly, ended with this dreaded detour. You can't go around it or over it. You can only go through it. And hope and pray and cling with the very edge of your fingertips and sanity and hope and faith that you see the other side. And this is where Brent's and my crazy journey took an insane turn. We put it all on the table with each other. We'd lived a journey, a marriage, a life of mostly good times and health. And suddenly the not so good. The not healthy at all. When we were those bright-eyed kids from the wedding photo, pledging fidelity and forever in the tux and shiny white dress I didn't examine too closely the dark side of the coin. I blissfully ignored the valleys we would encounter. And now it was staring me down. Like a gunslinger at twenty paces. But with shocking ease that love we had nurtured through the journey? It held strong. Brent held strong. When I was too weak to take another step in our journey he held my hand. We leaned on each other. He held me when I broke. When I cried. In my darkest moment, in our darkest moment. He made me laugh. And keep going. Not give up. Smile. Heal. And we made it through. Our journey wasn't over. My journey wasn't over.
But twenty years after I'd first written about life being a journey I had the same realization. Traveling your path isn't the same as embracing your journey. Living your life isn't the same as squeezing every last bit of life from it. So Brent and I re-evaluated everything. We were still in love with each other. Even better? We still really liked each other. We liked our kids. We get a serious charge out of just being together. But did we love the way we were living our lives? Not so much. We wanted more freedom to move, more freedom to roam. Less roadmap. More off-road. So we jumped. Off the road. Sometimes off the side of a sheer cliff. But always together. And for three years we've been grabbing our journey with both hands. We've left normalcy behind and embraced our own path. Writing our own story, drawing our own maps. It's weird. We are weird. Society, in general, has no idea what to think about our family, our lifestyle. But by embracing our true selves we've met some fellow vagabonds. And it's made our life, our journey so very rich. Vibrant. More than a fifteen year old could imagine but at the same time exactly what this fifteen year old never dared to hope for. Exactly what I'd dreamed of. Wistfully. Hypothetically. Now no longer ethereal. Gloriously, messily tangible. Seeing places -- near and far; exotic and everyday. Being in love. In love with the guy I met twenty years ago who's seen all my flaws and weaknesses and still views me as powerful. And beautiful. Who loves me for exactly who I am. No more. No less. He's more than the teenage me dreamed of. More than I deserve.
And these kids? They centered me. From the moment of their first breaths they've helped me fulfill my purpose and heal my soul. Each and every moment with them is salve for my battered heart. I thrive on these kids who challenge me. Kids who amuse me. Kids who astound and frustrate and inspire and exhaust me. In retrospect, I'm glad I wrote about the journey of life at 15. I'm thrilled that life continues to surprise me. I'm squeezing every moment I can from each day. Because it's a gift. And the journey is better now, having passed through the valley and into the light. Secure in the knowledge that the bonds of love and grace and hope and faith will guide me through each valley that may come. Maps are still fascinating and sometimes useless. Ideals are harder to believe in at forty than they were at fifteen. But those ideals are dearer still with the struggle to believe. And life? Life IS an exhilarating journey. And it's so much more than a destination. It's most definitely all the growing and aging, the loving and the hurting, the growth and the grief, the miles and the adventure and the people encountered along the way.
