Over the last year, as it would come up, we would tell people that we are going to be gone this school year. I started to notice a pattern in people’s responses and it would typically be one of three:

• Some people would get excited for us and ask lots of questions, saying they’d love to do something like this.
• Others would get a perplexed look on their face, ask a few questions that seemed to communicate they thought this is a terrible idea and maybe we are a little off in the head.
• A few would get kind of quiet, the topic would fizzle quickly and we’d move on awkwardly. I would never know what was going on with them and hope I hadn’t brought up something that was hurtful.  

One conversation was different. One morning we were talking to some new friends at church. Somehow the conversation led to us saying that we were going to be traveling next school year. They asked where, we told them, and Will, the husband, looked surprised and said, “What?! How?!  I appreciated his frankness and have remembered it since.  I’ll answer the WHAT in this post and the next and the HOW later.  

What?

First, Scott and I love to travel. We love to try other culture’s food, spending time in new landscapes, seeing how other people live and the opportunity to consider life from a new perspective. We believe travel makes you grow in ways than you can grow at home.

Also, this trip is a realization and adaptation of a dream that started over twenty years ago.  Scott and I met in college at Harding University in Searcy, AR.  We got engaged right before we graduated.  He went back to Nashville to start law school and I moved there in the fall to find a job and an apartment that would become ours.  I needed a year off before starting graduate school so I could focus on preparing to get married, adjust to being an adult and have a break from being a student.  The end of college had been difficult with a heavy class load and my parents separating and then getting divorced.   

Several of our friends went straight to professional or graduate school as well, but some, including my twin sister, Linda, moved overseas to teach English and travel.  We had never considered this option.  We were too driven, conventional, and practical at the time.  As the years of graduate school passed, we enjoyed hearing from them – what life was like for them as foreigners, all the places they were seeing and what the church was like in sometimes hostile environments.  We became interested in moving overseas, but decided that would be irresponsible for us since we were amassing a sizable amount of student loan debt.  When we finished law school and graduate school in 2001, we owed a staggering amount of money.  We set the priority to pay it off as soon as possible and knew it would be hard to even make the minimum payments earning humanitarian incomes overseas. We decided to stay in America and begin professional work, postponing the dream to live overseas.  

After graduation, but before starting work, Scott and I went on an eighteen day trip to Europe, spending most of our time in Italy. I’d never been to Europe but had wanted to go after many friends at Harding, including Scott, had done a study abroad program in Florence, Italy. The semester abroad shaped and matured each of them and gave them a hunger and appreciation for other cultures.  I wanted to see all the places I’d heard so much about. He was ready to go back, so we went to celebrate finishing law school and graduate school.  We also knew it would be hard to take off for that long once we started working.  

That trip was a wonderful experience. We packed in hiking backpacks we’d gotten for Christmas (my first taste of simplicity.)  We bought a Rick Steves guide to Italy and traveled light and inexpensively.  It was amazing to see things and places I’d studied like the Sistine Chapel and the prison where Saint Paul was imprisoned in Rome.   It was good for me to struggle to communicate and navigate foreign languages.  I loved the German and Italian landscapes, food and markets.  We enjoyed observing how other people lived and the reminder of how small we are in the grand scheme of the world. 

The next six years we lived simply and paid off our student loans one at a time using the Financial Peace principles by Dave Ramsey that some dear friends taught us while in school.  The only “extra” we allowed ourselves was travel.  In the spring of 2004, we went to China for two weeks to visit Linda.  That was another trip that stretched and amazed us.  It was like being in a different world.  We were amazed at the life Linda had made there, how her students adored her and welcomed us and her ability to navigate such a foreign place.  

I worked until the middle of my pregnancy with John, our firstborn, when we moved back to Nashville from Mobile, AL.    In the spring of 2007, we sold the house we owned at the time to pay off the loans we had left.  We needed to be free from the pressure debt put on us so Scott could change jobs.  He was working at a large law firm at the time and it was taking its toll on him and our marriage.  John, our only child at the time, was two years old, we were finally free from debt, but had not started saving for retirement or college.  We moved to an apartment to make a plan.  A few months later, Scott found a different job, we bought an inexpensive fixer upper close to downtown Nashville and we continued on with the Financial Peace plan:  live simply and start saving for retirement and college.  I don’t think we ever considered anything else.  We were still too driven and practical for that.  (to be continued . . .)