We know it seems crazy. It’s a matter of upsetting the status quo. Doing something ridiculously outside of normal American life.
But that’s part of the reason we are doing it.
The decision to spend more than the typical couple of weeks for vacation in a different country came as a process.
It wasn’t like we woke up one day said, “I quit. Let’s move to New Zealand.” (Ok, so maybe we did say that. But at the time it was only a joke.)
But there were plenty of days when we did wake up and say, “I feel like something needs to change. But I’m scared to do anything about it.”
Granted, I might have been scared. Drew is rarely scared of anything. His lust for life and adventure and his complete trust in the Goodness of the Father amazes me. And I want more of that for myself.
Many people have asked us, “Why New Zealand? What made you decide to go there and do this?”
It really stems from entertaining the idea of ‘What if…”
Usually people say, “I would love to go to a gorgeous place like New Zealand.”
But what if you did? For real. What if? Then what?
New Zealand has always been at the top of Drew’s ‘Places to Visit Before I Die’ list. (And mine as well.) And when our friends Ashley & Justin decided to spend their first year of marriage traveling New Zealand, we started thinking about the possibility as well.
What if we went to New Zealand? For 2 months? 4 months? A whole year? What would that mean for our jobs? Would we work remotely from our laptops? Do we have enough money saved to leave our jobs? Do we even want to leave our jobs?
What about our apartment? Could we sub-lease it? Or just move out? What about a place to live when we come back?
We started to entertain the details. We hadn’t made a decision yet. We were just talking it through. What if…?
Sometimes I gave way to fear. What if this is too crazy? What will people think? Can we really do this?
But then I remembered that “Someday is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you.”
What if we didn’t go to New Zealand? Would we look back on our lives 10, 15, 20 years from now and regret not doing it?
Yeah. We would.
So we wrote down some goals and talked out more details. We asked God what He thought about New Zealand. (He’s a fan, by the way.) We talked to other friends who have traveled.
At first we decided to spend 2 months in New Zealand. We toyed with the idea of working remotely (since the majority of our jobs are computer- & Internet-based).
What if we stayed longer? More like 4 months? There were people ready to stand in the gap for us at work.
But no. God has been teaching us how to rest. How to let go of busyness and striving and fear.
And so we are taking a complete sabbatical.
We’re not viewing it as an escape from ‘real life’ either. It’s just a different way of life. More like what we want our life to look like from here on out.
More flexibility. More time. More beauty. And more Life.
