Our neighbor just got dropped off in front of his house by a coworker.  This is pretty normal.  It’s 9:30 in the morning.  His name is Steve and he works the night shift at Walmart.  I can’t imagine working all night and sleeping all day.  It makes me wonder how crazy hours like that affect one’s social life.  I mean, you meet someone at a party and talk about what you do for a living and for fun and you both realize that you like the same music and mountain biking and Scrabble.  But then you realize that your schedules will never line up.  That you will be going to bed as he’s primed and ready to go get coffee at 11pm.  Maybe people who can work these ridiculous hours don’t mind.  Maybe they like that they don’t have to work on relationships.  It’s a different lifestyle.  I like that we’re all made to crave a different kind of lifestyle from one another.  I mean, the UPS package that was just delivered to our house would not have made it here if there weren’t pilots, drivers, warehouse workers, and a thousand other workers willing to live a different life because of what they do.  I wonder if their jobs have dictated how they will live in this alternate universe or if they already lived in that universe and they went after a job that fit with their desire to eat dinner at 4am. What’s funny is ninety percent of the people night shift workers encounter will say how sorry they are that somebody would have to put up with such awful conditions, such a horrible existence as a night shirft worker.  However, the other ten percent will look at them and say how cool it is that God has wired them to live differently.  That the norm is lame and that counter-culture is the only way to live.

I wake up at 6am.  I drive 40 miles one way to a big corporate office.  I sit in a gray cubical for 8 hours a day looking at a computer screen.  Don’t get me wrong.  Believe it or not I love my job.  I love the people I work with and the products I make.  I wouldn’t want to leave it.  Except that we are planning to leave it.  We’ve started telling people our plan.  That we’ll have to quit our jobs and basically have no form of income for a while.  That’s stupid.  We’re crazy.  Don’t we know what the economy looks like right now.  People are desperate for work and I got a pretty cush job and I’m planning to leave it.  I even have a wife to support.  How irresponsible of me.  Truth is, my gut tells me that it would be irresponsible to just stick with the status quo; to drive my 40 miles to work look at my computer screen and collect a nice little paycheck that puts bacon on the table every night…or at least the nights we have breakfast for dinner.  Bacon is important.  Bacon tastes good.  But bacon is also a luxury.

I’m blessed to have married a woman that cares nothing for luxury.  Instead she cares about others.  She loves God, she loves others.  I do too.  But we both want to love God and others with everything in our lives.  As much as we love our jobs, our hearts have been burdened to go in a new direction to pursue this goal of love.  This is why I feel it would be irresponsible not to move forward.  There might be some regrets along the way.  But our hope is they won’t be regrets about what we should have done.  I hope our regrets are about that burger we ate…that piled high, juicy, heart attack burger that tasted so good at the time and looked so good at that little joint in small town of Dish, TX.  I honestly don’t think we’ll be regretting that our bank account isn’t increasing at a rapid enough rate.  We might regret the we’re trying to cross the country a couple time in a ’72 VW Bus.  This regret might happen while stranded in the middle of the desert 30 miles from a station in either direction.  I hope that even in that time we won’t feel regret.  I hope we’ll embrace the things God teaches us in presumably difficult situations.  I hope that we learn to rely on God when we just spent the last $5 in our wallet.  That we learn to trust Him for His provision.

So yes, Lindsey and I want to explore what it means to love God and love others, the top two commands that we’re given in the Bible.  Those two pretty much encompass all the Ten Commandments.  These are the two things we are to do.  Are we doing it?  Who is doing it?  How are they doing it?  What does this love look like?  Are we loving God and others by taking a road trip around the country?  Can we love others by taking a road trip around the country?  This is the beginning of the book.  So we don’t know the answers yet.  I hope we find some answers.  Our goal is to meet people on the road that are loving God and others in unique ways.  In ways that we talk about doing one day when we’re retired and have time on our hands.  Did you hear about Vision Ministries on the news the other night?!  Of course you didn’t.  And you never will.  But love is pouring out of that place….and million other places that we don’t even know about.  We hope to see a small sliver of these places.  God changes lives daily; all around the world.  What is He doing in America specifically.  I wish we had the time / energy for a “road trip” around the world.  Maybe in time we will.  But for now, lets start out…..um…..small.  Only covering the tiny space of the US.