JOURNEY

JOURNEY

              While I’m writing this, I’m riding in the car with my husband on the way to pick up my in-laws from the airport. Anyone who knows, or has met, my husband, Zach, knows that he can grow a mean beard. Right now, it is full lumberjack from being grown out all winter. He always maintains it very well, keeping it clean, soft, and trimmed.

              Yesterday, he went to the barber to have it shaped, and he told me the story of the conversation he had with his barber. While his beard was being trimmed, Zach was telling him about my blog (aw) and all the things I’ve had the opportunity to learn from my internship.

              Their conversation revolved around the reality of life, and how far removed from it many Americans live. Even the fact that hard things sometimes happen, like calves dying, is unacceptable to some people. (If you haven’t had a chance, you can read more about this in my previous blog entry) They want to gloss over life  and make it look perfect. His point was that, many times, people see where they are and where they want to be, and they want to skip over the hard parts of the journey and just get to their desired destination.

Plane Ride vs. Road Trip

              If you’ve ever done any traveling, you will know there is a BIG difference between traveling by plane and taking a road trip. I’ve done a little bit of both. Most recently, I flew to join my mentor, Amy, where she was training in Ocala, Florida, and then drove back cross-country with her to Colorado.

              The differences between those two travel styles are drastic. When you fly, you do have to putter around in the airport a bit and go through TSA (which nobody likes), but shortly you are where you wanted to be. You have seen nothing of the land in-between your departure and arrival. However when you take a road trip, it’s long and arduous. There aren’t any shortcuts – you have to drive the same number of miles no matter what. There’s traffic and weather and pitstops. But you see all of the changes in the landscape and all the beautiful countryside between where you were to where you’re going.

              Until you’ve had a chance to drive across our beautiful nation, you never realize how many different ecosystems our country holds. We started in lush, green Florida where the elevation was low and the humidity was high. Then we went through Georgia and Tennessee where moisture levels stayed high but the landscape became more hilly and roads were more winding. Once we crossed the Mississippi River into Missouri the ecology became drastically drier. Then the hills slowly tapered away until we entered Kansas where the land completely flattened out into grassland with perfectly straight roads. Then of course, just before we reached home, we entered the foothills of Colorado, where everything is still flat, but the Rocky Mountains loom in the near distance.

What Life is About

              When it comes to life, the journey compares a lot closer to road tripping than to flying, and I’m actually glad for that. All the in-between places that you travel through are so important to developing who you become. How you respond to the changes in the landscape dictates your success. Sometimes there are detours. Sometimes you hit traffic and getting mad does no good.

              It’s tempting to put very little effort into making it to the place where you want to be, but life just doesn’t work that way. It is much more gratifying to travel through all of the valleys and climb all of the hills that life puts in your path. You will be able to look back and see the places you’ve been, and have great stories of how you made it through, which will encourage others on their path.

Sometimes It’s Hard

              We did our trip from Florida to Colorado in three days. The first and third days were long but fairly uneventful. The second day however was rife with bad weather. We woke up to tornado warnings for the area we were in, and then the majority of the day was spent white-knuckle driving through pouring rain. To be clear, we were pulling a trailer loaded with three horses, so the driving was even more stressful. We planned to make full use of the hotel’s exercise room that evening to stretch our muscles after sitting all day. But by the time we made it to our room, we were so mentally and emotionally exhausted that we went right to bed.

              I often can relate my internship to this. I feel so blessed to have this opportunity, but it is very taxing mentally and emotionally, as well as physically. Being in Florida was amazing, but I often felt that my knowledge of the customs of the eventing world (or of any high-end barn for that matter) was very lacking. Every time I felt uneducated, I reminded myself to give myself grace. Those moments are very important to me, because they let me know I’m in the right place. When you have put yourself in a learning situation, if you don’t feel uncomfortable at least 50% of the time, then you aren’t learning enough. But when those feelings of discomfort arise, I choose to be thankful for the reminder that I am stretching myself.

Don’t Skip It

              Life is messy and hard. There are many different climates of life. Sometimes it's lush and green, sometimes it's arid and dusty. Maybe there are hills and winding roads, or maybe it’s flat and straight. Perhaps there are mountains looming in the distance. No matter where you are in the journey, you learn something from every place you travel through.

There’s a song I’ve been listening to on repeat lately by one of my favorite artists, Lindsey Stirling. The song is Don’t Let This Feeling Fade and the lyrics go, “What really matters in life? Is it a sprint or a marathon? And what if finish lines make us happy, or are we glad we can run at all?” Those words really speak to me because they hold the truth of this journey called life. It isn’t about the end. It’s about the journey and what it makes us.