The joy of saying yes

Invitations that appear at first to be detours, but might actually be on-ramps to exactly where we need to be

We got another invitation last week. That’s three in the span of a year. None of them were printed on fancy paper with gold filagree or delivered by a well-dressed butler.

This most recent one came via Facebook Messenger. The one before that was delivered over the phone, and the one before that arrived in an email. The formality or lack thereof, though, is not important. What matters is they are all from far away, and they all put us farther behind in the enormous task we are trying to complete: the building of our expedition vehicle so we can finally hit the road. How can we possibly afford to say yes to all these invitations?

Perhaps the better question is: how can we afford to say no to any of them?

The first invitation came last autumn. We had planned a big trip to Puerto Rico—a place we’d always wanted to go—for our 30th wedding anniversary, but another big hurricane hit the island before we were scheduled to arrive. Lounging around as tourists didn’t feel right, but we hated to cancel.

After some research, we contacted a local ministry group there, The Happy Givers, and asked if they could possibly use our help. They said they could definitely put us to work and invited us to come. That invitation was an easy yes for us, of course, since it was already our desire to go. Arriving in Puerto Rico, we felt like outsiders for the first day. But after two weeks of serving shoulder-to-shoulder with them at their headquarters in Vega Baja, our new friends there felt more like family. We miss them, think about them often, and would go back in a heartbeat if the opportunity arose.

Saying yes to Puerto Rico, a place we’d always wanted to go anyway, to live and work among fellow Christians, was apparently Stage One of our learning process.

Stage Two occurred more recently. When my brother-in-law and sister-in-law invited us to go with them to visit his (our) extended family in Zambia this past summer, we had to briefly stop and think. We had long wanted to go meet everyone there, but there were two significant obstacles. First, it would be a big expense. We had enough airline miles built up to cover a big chunk of the cost of the trip, though. The bigger concern was that it would cut into the time we had set aside for building our travel rig. We had hoped to be finished and on our way by summer. If we said yes to this invitation, we would lose precious time. Still, it felt like a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and it was our family. With wide eyes and matching dramatic gulps, we looked at each other, nodded, and said yes. We would go to Zambia.

Saying yes to Zambia was Stage Two—going very far, at great expense, to an unfamiliar cultural setting to be with family we’d never met. It was not what we’d planned to do with our summer, so it meant delaying our progress. But family is important, and we had always dreamed of going there to see them. It was absolutely the right thing to do, and we are so glad we went.

When this third invitation came last week, though, we were taken entirely by surprise. The possibility of such an invite was completely off our radar. Much like a few weeks ago, when I was suddenly surprised to come face to face with a bear, we had not even considered this possibility and were momentarily stunned. It had not occurred to us that we might get invited to another major family event on the other side of the world—in a culture wholly foreign to us, in place we’ve never been, to meet more family we didn’t know.

Dropping everything to flit about the world on a whim like this is NOT the way Andy and I started our lives together. This time, I wasn’t initially sure if it was wise.

We didn’t have any money in the early years of our marriage—and by early, I mean the first twenty five out of thirty. We were the ones digging in the sofa cushions for coins so we could buy two cheap ice cream cones at the local drug store and call it a date.

We were the ones setting up a garage sale, hoping to scrape together enough money to pay rent. More than once, I walked out of the grocery store empty-handed and burning with shame because my debit card had been declined. Again.

I remember one day when our kids were young, having nothing to my name but a one-dollar bill and another dollar in coins I had scraped together. The bank account was overdrawn, and we had finally cut up our credit cards, so our usual safety net was gone. I remember the tightness in my throat as I walked into the grocery store, not sure how I was going to feed my family with two dollars—and not wanting to resort to packets of ramen noodles—praying God would lead me to a solution. I remember the tears of gratitude that rolled down my face when I found a bag of spaghetti noodles on sale for 99 cents and a jar of sauce for the same.

People who travel—beyond visiting family for the holidays—were in one class in my mind. We were in quite another.

Gradually, though, after we both took teaching jobs in Oregon and decided to live in a camping trailer while we rented out our Montana home, things began to shift for us, financially. We were finally making more—significantly more—than we needed to spend. As I studied personal finance (because I was teaching it at the high school—oh, the irony), Andy led the charge to repair our credit, prioritize saving, and generally learn how to manage our money so that it worked for us instead of us working for it.

By the time this third invitation came last week, we were in an entirely different situation than those earlier years. As we prepare to hit the road permanently, living with no fixed address, we are cutting loose the bonds that tie us to this life of material possessions. We have sold the house (in a very seller-friendly market) and nearly all of its contents. We are gradually selling all the tools in the shop; the cargo trailer just sold, and in the next couple of months we will liquidate both of our cars. We are not replacing any of those things with upgrades or even downgrades. We are just trading them out for cash, then moving straight into a lifestyle that is significantly less expensive than living the typical American Dream in the United States.

So, when we received word last week that Hamizah, our former exchange student from Malaysia, is getting married in December and her family is inviting us to be honored guests at the wedding, going didn’t seem likely, but we didn’t immediately dismiss the idea, either. Hamizah lived with our family for an entire semester, spring of 2018. She called us Mama Sherry and Papa Andy and was a sibling to our children. Our Malaysian daughter attended the school where we taught, gained cousins and grandparents from our family as we road tripped around the West over spring break, and learned much about American culture.

Hamizah’s parents trusted us to care for their child like one of our own. And a year later, when our own youngest was traveling the world after high school, they opened their own home and their hearts to our child. The two-way exchange was complete. Although Andy and I have never met Hamizah’s parents or the rest of her family or friends; nor do we share a common first language, culture, or faith; the bonds of family have joined us together. And now they have invited us to come.

Andy was instantly excited at the prospect, but I will admit I was hesitant. So many years were spent skimping and saving and saying no out of necessity that it has become a habit for me. Plus, we just went to Zambia, and before that, Puerto Rico. We have so much work to do yet, and we have plans for where we want to be and when. We can’t just keep slowing down to explore every detour in our path. We have a goal ahead of us! It was an honor to be invited, but surely, it was just a formality. They couldn’t have expected that we would actually say yes to a wedding invitation half-way around the world.

Then Andy reminded me of what our goal actually is. We want to be free to wander the world, being a blessing to others everywhere we go, serving where we can, and having grand adventures learning about everything along the way. We want to expand our notion of family, our heartstrings binding us to people all over the world. We want to share God’s love in practical ways, being the hands and feet of Jesus, loving others because He first loved us.

Oh. Right. Silly me. These are not obstacles; this is the on-ramp.

The travel rig will be finished when it is finished. The cost of the trip will not be regretted, once we get past the initial sting. We will start our road trip when we are ready. We can adjust our plans as necessary. Right here, right now, our family in Malaysia has invited us to come. We are the bride’s American parents.

We said yes, of course, and purchased our airfare. We’re going to Malaysia. Since the flight is the biggest expense, we will take advantage of our situation and backpack around southeast Asia for a couple months while we are in the region. Food, lodging, and regional transportation in countries like Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam cost a small fraction of what they do here, and our time has to be spent somewhere, one way or the other. We might as well explore another part of the world while we have the opportunity.

Perhaps we are being foolish. Again. Or maybe we are finally stepping into what God has been preparing us for our whole lives. It’s quite possible that this one-year, three-stage process of saying yes to progressively far-fetched invitations is exactly what we need before we set out on the road. Who knows what lies ahead? Maybe my old habits of being overly frugal and reserved need to be broken before we can freely give, just as we have freely received.

If you have any connections in southeast Asia, dear reader—family or friends, organizations or ministries you think we could possibly connect with in some way between late December and the end of February—please do let me know. We are compiling a world-wide database of connections. Our family is steadily growing, and we are excited to meet them all.