Staying Home Broke.
I have spent the last 8 weeks both gathering and controlling my thoughts. There’s been a lot of noise, a lot of numbers, a lot of bad news, a lot of insider knowledge from someone's brother's cousins best friends sister who works in government (am I right or am I right?), not to mention the countless cancelled flights, hotels and tours along with all of life's other plans. I’m drowning in vouchers I can’t use yet whilst staring at an empty calendar.
As the world starts to evolve and adapt to the current situation we are all facing I’ve been preparing the blog to serve a different purpose in this unique season. I want to best serve the readers of this site by inspiring you with travel and encouraging you to just keep it real. I know that to overwhelm you with travel inspiration isn’t going to restore your confidence in your future. The truth is no person can give us any real assurance in the future right now but still, we look for it everywhere we go.
I don’t think we’ve been transparent enough about the waves of fear we’re all feeling through isolation. After much thought and time to myself, I can only describe the path I’ve been walking on as a slow unraveling. I’ve been slowly unthreading myself week by week and the hands of my own need to control are growing tired and starting to loosen and untangle around my life.
I’ve felt my mind break into my heart and then tie itself into a knot in my stomach. That knot has slowly been unraveling into understanding.
Finally, into something good.
We’ve been presented with the biggest opportunity of our lives to change. We’ve been given a moment to stop, pause, and reflect.
In the first couple of weeks of isolation, distancing, quarantine, and all the other words we’ve come to know so well – I couldn’t get my mind off the Jordan River. I kept feeling drawn to that moment, where I was by the Jordan. Somewhere in my thoughts was this perfect memory crying out ‘remember me!?’ dying to be recalled and described in every detail.
Why?
On our second day in Israel, we embarked on a huge day of site seeing. By midday, we had realised that this day was only getting worse and it certainly wasn’t what we were expecting. Actually, it was deeply disappointing. We’d been looking forward to it and had planned this day with excitement and anticipation for months. We were ready to get our guide to just take us home so we could try and enjoy the rest of our day in Jerusalem but we had one last stop – The Jordan River.
Cynically, I was assuming that it was going to be as disappointing as everywhere else, and swarming with tourists and cheap souvenirs - so my confidence in enjoying this was low. We were exhausted in every way and I had secretly given up on the day.
but
The Jordan River was an unexpected sweet relief. Not even a minute had gone by before my trivial bad day was long forgotten. Without even knowing it, I had been waiting all along for this unexpected moment. Something I could never have planned or prepared for. It just happened. Doesn’t life go by so quickly that we can barely catch our breath? We’re always running and there’s no room in the itinerary for surprises. We don’t have a chance to stop, pause, and reflect on anything.
When this ‘new normal’ arrived, it turned our lives upside down. We didn’t even get to say goodbye to our past and nothing has worried us more than our future because it’s what we can’t see that frightens us the most.
The Jordan river slowly filled up with visitors who were there to be baptised. We sat there watching people going in and out, crying and laughing as doves rested on the edge of the river bank. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. People who had travelled from every corner of the world desperate to leave their old life behind in the water in the hope of something greater. Something they believe is necessary for the future. Imagine that – actually wanting to leave the past behind. Ready to let it all go, to move forward.
Our unraveling isn’t the end. Whenever we can’t see what's ahead, there is hope.
It may be nothing like what we expected but better than what we could’ve imagined and maybe, it’s just what we needed. Suddenly, when we don’t even know and the time is right we’ll be by our Jordan River.
Don’t give up on what will come from your unraveling and your despair.
