September had no business travel, so of course October had to make up for it. Combined with a 3-stop speaking tour, I had a trip to our LA headquarters and another to Seattle for a meeting on the Microsoft campus. Sprinkled in-between were some wonderful personal trips in Ontario and Pennsylvania. I’ve lost track of how many miles were spent in the air, but 2,226 miles were spent in a car. Tonite will be the first night in my own bed in 3 weeks.
Travel creates lots of time for reflection — especially when it has you re-treading old paths. In Seattle, I got an afternoon to visit the sweet spot we used to call home in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. The event I spoke at in New York was 20 minutes from the apartment where our oldest two kids were born. I also circumnavigated Lake Ontario for the first time ever, and got to enjoy breath-takingly beautiful views of the Thousand Islands — a place I am resolved to visit again with the family.
A particularly interesting stop was at a conference in Pennsylvania with ABWE, a missions organization with a long history of enabling incredible good, and briefer history of hiding incredible evil. We were interested to see what had become of the folks that sent my family to Bangladesh in my youth, and after reading many books on the topic, learn a little more about what’s happening in that still-troubled country. Some things have definitely changed: their website and missionary training now contains clear and unequivocal information on the safety and protection of children, and they’ve launched a tech ministry that has the stated purpose of partnering with, and enabling, nationals to reach their own people. Some things have not changed: I spoke to a missionary who felt over-worked on the field and that his family suffered as a result, and we heard from an executive team that is still 90% old white American dudes — not exactly a diverse crew. Still, even the white dudes were espousing some progress: that our families are our most important work, and that Americans might not always be God’s premier messengers in some parts of the world.
Each of the stops had a certain percentage of “what if” to them. We’d probably be a good deal more wealthy if we still lived in Seattle. Things might be easier if we lived somewhere in Ontario. I spoke at a really cool college in New York, maybe I could have made a career path out of that, if we’d stayed there. And of course an organization like ABWE could launch us almost anywhere in the world. We don’t really have any data to suggest that any other option would be better than the one we’ve selected, but the weight of other possibilities is sometimes overwhelming. We turn 40 next year — have we done everything we should have by this point? Our oldest becomes a teenager in just a couple months — are we doing a disservice to our kids by giving them such an easy, comfortable life?
Travel is expensive with a family of five. Banking miles on business travel takes me far away from my kids, but buys us opportunities to take them on little adventures. The next few we have planned will be fun and easy ones, but I wonder if its time to show them a little more of the world.
Love your reflections.