My oldest son Riley is currently on a five-week vision quest to Ireland. After arriving last Friday he emailed me to say he was exhausted and felt very, very alone. In fact, he said he’d never felt so alone in his whole life.
This was no surprise. Riley is a people person and we all knew that the most challenging part of this trip would be the fact that he would be going by himself. To have such a huge adventure but no one to share it with is pretty tough. At the time, jet-lagged and completely disoriented, Riley was feeling pretty small in a very big world.
I wrote him a return email. I was reminded of the scene from The Lord of the Rings…from the first of the trilogy “The Fellowship of the Ring.” The hobbits, Frodo and Sam, have just embarked on their adventure and have left The Shire not knowing where their ultimate destination would be.
While walking through a field rich with crops, Sam stops suddenly. When Frodo looks back, wondering why he’s stopped, Sam says, “This is it. If I take one more step, it’ll be the farthest away from home I’ve ever been.”
I reminded Riley that the step he took to Ireland was a pretty big step by anyone’s measure. But I also reminded him that you never really learn anything in life unless you are willing to take those big steps.
Growth doesn’t happen close to home in familiar, comfortable surroundings. Real growth, lasting growth only happens in the cold grip of the unknown. When you’ve put yourself in a position to utterly fail…or to find that something within yourself that you always knew was there but needed to find it and drag it out into the open—that’s when you grow, when you really discover what’s deep down inside you.
As long as we are willing to stay at home in our comfort zones, we’re destined to perpetuate the status quo. We’ll live the same lives, eat the same foods, sleep the same sleep…day after day, year after year. We might actually find some measure of compromised happiness but we’ll never discover real fulfillment.
If growth is what we’re after then we’re going to have to start taking some steps. Eventually we’ll need to commit to taking some big steps. Steps that take us away, steps that put us in unfamiliar surroundings around people and places we don’t know, steps that might even put us in danger.
The more I think about Riley’s trip, taking off to Ireland with nothing but a backpack and a bike, the more courageous it becomes. Riley will come home in a month or so with much more than a bunch of pictures, memories, and a few cheap souvenirs. Riley will come home with a bigger heart. He’ll come home with a bigger vision of who he is and of who God is…and how it all fits together.
What about you? When was the last time you stood at the far edge of your experience and felt that rush of stepping out into the unknown? When was the last time you really put your faith to the test?
Well, there’s no time like the present. What is it in your life right now that you need to take all the way to the edge of your experience and then take one more step into the great unknown? What great adventure awaits you?
I love the advice that Frodo gives Sam once they start off again on their journey. He reminds Sam of what his uncle Bilbo had always said, “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”
Find the edge and step out there.
P.S. the pic above is of the Cliffs of Mohar where Riley is spending this week…in Doolin, County Clare on the west coast of Ireland
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