We discovered, through tagging along with Matt, while he traveled for work, that the kids loved new adventures and it wasn’t as hard as we thought. They loved exploring. They couldn’t get enough of learning and seeing new sights. And we loved it, too. 

How could we stomach so much change? What would a new job for Matt look like when we returned? In our hearts we wanted to travel. We’d spent ten years saving money. We’d always dreamed of doing something big with that money but could this really be it? Could we really pack up our suitcases, leave our suburban life, and go around the world?!

One story that changed everything for us happened seven years earlier… Matt’s dad retired at the age of 72. He’d spent 22 years in the blazing hot sun maintaining the athletic fields for a local high school. Two weeks after his retirement, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer… His dream of enjoying a relaxing and fulfilling retirement was spent at chemo appointments and in pain. We knew that dreaming mattered and time was precious… too precious to wait. 

So we stepped into the second priority on our new list… to travel. Not later but right now. It was time to see the world.

After perusing a map and dreaming of all the places we could go and things we could see, we decided it was most important to immerse ourselves in the places we visited and the only way to do this was to slow travel. No rushing from monument to monument. We were going to shop at the village markets, meet the local people, and savor each destination. Purposefully and intentionally.  

Each of us picked the place we most wanted to visit. 

James went for New York.

Eli picked Paris.

Luke pointed to Tokyo.

Matt chose New Zealand.

I opted for Byron Bay, Australia. 

We then mapped them out. We bought around the world plane tickets. We bought train tickets and connected the dots in between. This left us with #20 stops.

We were experiencing the people. The smells. The curiosity around trying new foods and learning to communicate in new languages. Being together. 

Fast forward eight months and one trip around the world later...

Our suitcases were battered and worn. One wheel was busted up, zippers broken. We were dragging after a red-eye flight back to the US. This trip had changed us. We all knew it. As a family, we needed this trip. We reconnected, we laughed, we explored, we cried, and we ultimately realized we wanted more out of life. Now was the hardest part: returning home and figuring out the next step.

Could we go back to our old lives?  Were we the same people? Was that just a nice break or a transforming life experience? How would we go from necessities in our suitcases back to suburban life?

It was time to recalculate once more…..