What I Want From This Journey

What was it I wanted from this journey?

What was it I wanted from this journey before we set off? What did I think it would give me? I’m racking my brain with these question trying to remember. We don’t have any plans to return to England “for good” any time soon (even if many of my posts here and on Instagram lead you to believe otherwise). But I do think about what it is we might “return to”. I admit it’s rather scary at the moment!

The hope is that Nick doesn’t return to a 9-5 five days a week type job like before. But without that income we can’t afford to buy a house or get a mortgage, I’m not sure we could even afford to rent somewhere (assuming here that it is England we re-settle in). By this point in my thought process I’m already starting to panic. Is this what the naysayers warned would be our future if we gave it all up for life in a van? Homeless. Jobless. Miserable.

No idea of where we are headed

It all feels very uncertain. I realise there is no clear path, or idea, or even dream at this time. Perhaps that’s what the real issue is for me. Not having a dream for the future. We have always had a dream or an idea of where we are headed (or want to end up), it is unsettling to me to have neither. But yes, I embarked on this journey knowing I would have to sit with these hard uncomfortable feelings. In fact, I wanted to experience them. To push ourselves out of our comfort zone.

Perhaps the issue is also needing a place to be headed, of living always with the future in mind. This journey is hopefully teaching us how to live in the here and now. Most days on the road we don’t really know where we’re headed, we only have vague ideas. Maybe if we spend long enough travelling this way, it will seep into our bones and change this need to always be looking ahead.

Change

So what is it I wanted from this journey? I wanted to be changed, right at my core. At the moment it manifests itself as worries over where we will live, how we will live.

I truly wish that one day from now we will look back at this journey and see what it did for us. To know that without it, we wouldn’t have got to the content place that I dream we’ll be. And to feel how all this uncertainty, this uncomfortable season of “exile”, has shaped us.