I’ve always wanted to travel. Like all travelers, I want to see beauty and excitement. More than anything, I want to travel to a place that has far less than I do. I want to be stretched, uncomfortable, and have no other choice but to rely on something greater than myself. My dream of travel isn’t about bragging rights, digital pictures, or trinkets. My dream of travel is really about recognizing my selfishness and going somewhere where there’s no choice but to die to myself.
My biggest fear in life is that I won’t go. I will get distracted. Or busy. Or poor. Or scared.
It was a requirement that my life partner would share this dream with me. When we said, “I do,” we were ready to go explore together. We were talking of places, timelines, and money.
Then, we got pregnant. All at once, it seemed those dreams died, and we woke up in a different reality. We were in the game of life and got fast-tracked to adulthood. I experienced an overwhelming amount of failure, because I hadn’t gone. My one life goal, and I had missed my opportunity.
People always say you can “travel with kids.” If it’s so easy, why don’t people actually do it? In my heart, I knew I could go later, but it would never be as easy and convenient as it has once been. Here I was with a weekly grocery list and house slippers. Still in America. Still consumed with myself.
And then, a beautiful boy came into our lives. It was pure bliss, and we continue to praise God for all the goodness and love wrapped up in a 7lbs body.
All he does is poop, pee, burp, eat, sleep, and cry every ten seconds he loses his pacifier. My days and nights all look the same. Changing diapers, bouncing him in my arms, turning on the sound machine, and putting the pacifier back in every eleven seconds. Where’s the adventure? How could this be anything anyone would admire?
And then in the middle of the night as I’m up feeding my little boy, I realize something. My dreams of travel for the sake of being selfless are perhaps more selfish than I realized.
Maybe God’s way of showing me how to die to self is getting up five times a night, hearing the broken record of a pitiful cry, having to feed him whether it’s convenient or not, taking off work to care for a newborn, skipping lunch because I can’t set him down, doing laundry late at night because there’s no other time, and the list goes on and on.
When I hear that sweet cry through the monitor at all hours of the night, I realize I am being stretched, uncomfortable, and I can’t do this without Someone greater than myself.
I will travel one day, but maybe that dream doesn’t have to define me. Maybe God has other ways of showing me that it’s not all about me. It is about caring for others, taking care of needs, and learning that we need each other. I pictured myself learning this while sleeping in a hut, but perhaps I’ve just learned it holding the sweetest 4-week-old as his little hand holds mine.
