“We need to be more adventurous.”
That was the decision my wife Corinn and I made in October 2013. We were in our minivan traveling north on I-35 from Austin to our home in Temple, Texas. We’d spent the better part of two days at a Love Does conference in Austin listening to a variety of speakers who challenged us to live our best lives, love others and add some whimsy to our world.
The key speaker was Bob Goff, the man who wrote the best-selling book Love Does (hence the conference name). I had seen Bob speak live via telecast earlier that year, so I bought his book. Later that fall, we learned he and his organization were taking the Love Does concept on the road to Austin. A friend of mine surprised us with a pair of tickets to the two-day event.
I’d attended many conferences in my professional life, so I showed up prepared for a conference. I had an over-the-shoulder bag stuffed to the brim with my laptop, notebook, journal, numerous pens, and my worn copy of Love Does that I hoped Bob would sign.
I soon realized that I was way over-packed and this wasn’t an ordinary professional conference. Aside from the hundreds of balloons floating around the venue, there was a bounce house, a ball pit, a photo booth and donuts topped with maple icing and large chunks of bacon. There was also a large glass jar stuffed with dollar bills with a sign that encouraged you to take what you needed — and to leave money if you felt led to do so.
That last thing got me.
“Is this a joke?” I thought. “Who leaves money out in the open? There has to be a hidden camera.”
At the lunch hour, food trucks pulled into the parking lot. One of them offered gourmet grilled cheese. The food truck only took cash. Guess what…we didn’t have enough cash.
So I took a few bucks from the jar. And nobody said a word.
It was a unique conference. It challenged us.
On the drive home, we started to consider who we were and whether we’d learned anything?
That kind of self-analysis isn’t comfortable.
Corinn and I both fall into the “play it safe” category, so to hear speakers like Bob talk about letting go and living life, about loving others with abandon, about not worrying so much — that was tough to hear. Because, for us, risk meant the possibility of loss. The possibility of loss meant fear. Fear meant paralysis. Paralysis meant status quo. Status quo meant safe. And safe meant boring.
And that day in the minivan we decided we didn’t want to be boring any longer. We wanted our kids to look back and see that we did things with them, that we lived as fully as we could.
God, we knew, didn’t want us to live in fear.
So we chose that day to be more adventurous.
What would that look like?
We didn’t know. But we committed to saying “yes” to more opportunities and we committed to travel.
And how has that played out?
Wonderfully.
