Selling the ‘American Dream’ to Travel with Three Small Children

Just nine months ago my husband and I were relaxing on the couch together watching a movie. The kids were in bed and I was in my third trimester of pregnancy. As the movie ended, we began having a conversation that would change everything.

“What if?”

Those two little words started questions in our minds like, What if we lived life to the fullest? What if we weren’t afraid? What if we did something different? What if we jumped out of our comfort zones? What if we could alter the course of our life? What would that look like? Something sparked in both our hearts that evening and the flames only grew from that day on. We started talking every night, emailing each other our thoughts every day like best friends passing notes during math class. What if…? In the evenings we would talk like lovers planning a romantic, secret elope. Our questions circled around travel, adventure, different countries and what the Lord could have in it for us.

What if we sold everything and left, where would we go?

What if we traveled as a family, how would we make that work?

How would we pay for our expenses?

Do we want to travel the United States or abroad?

These were questions heavy with excitement and adventure. We were planning something so unorthodox, so wild, we often told ourselves that we should just forget the whole thing and be happy with the “American Dream,” something, it seems, we had attained at only thirty years old.

We had a paid for house in a country neighborhood on two acres, plus another house we rented out in the city, three beautiful children, good income and a rich church life with friends and family all thirty minutes away or less. We had seen the Lord work and move in our lives the past few years and seen wonderful growth in Him. Plus we had three small daughters, a five year old, two year old and another beautiful baby girl born in March 2016. So why were we thinking of selling everything, moving away from everyone we knew to go to foreign places with challenges and unknowns? And we weren’t even sure what we were going to find once we got there or why the Lord might be leading us there. So many times we asked ourselves why we felt pulled to leave everything behind, only to come to the conclusion that God must be putting this on our hearts. It must simply be Him.

And now, nine months later, I have to say again that it must be Him, because in less than nine months we have sold our rental property, we are in the process of selling the house we are currently in, and we are now in the owners of a 1974 47′ Olympic Adventurer sailboat half way across the country. In all that time the desire to be on the water has only grown, something we have never pursued before.

This is the beginning of our journey. In two weeks we will take a nearly month long vacation to be on our boat and sail down the east coast of the United States. We don’t know how far we will get or where we will end up. We might not get very far at all. We don’t know who we will meet or what we will do there. But we are going. We are leaving behind many tangible treasures for treasures unknown. And we can’t wait to see what we will find!

Chasing the whales,

Sailing the blue,

Find me a captain

And sign me a crew.

Captain and crew,

Captain and crew,

Take me, oh take me

To anywhere new!

“Needles and Pins” by Shel Silverstein