“You’re really living your best life this year.”
I got used to people telling me this. They would look at me in awe when I told them about my exciting travel plans for this year, their eyes reflecting the hopeful excitement I felt when I thought about it. In my head, I imagined the new collection of stamps on my used-once passport that I was going to rack up. Mexico for spring break. France and Spain for study abroad, and other countries on the weekends. We could have gone anywhere— Morocco, I hoped, and Italy, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, and on and on. Then, three days after coming home, I’d be on a plane to Uruguay for a mission trip. And in secret I had even crazier plans. What if I got my scuba certification this spring and then went diving with my dad in Belize in December? What if I figured out something even crazier and studied abroad in the fall? How many countries could I possibly go to in a year?
“That’s crazy,” people would half-whisper when I listed my itinerary, and I would nod and grin at the fantastic adventure I was going to live.
Then everything changed.
I tracked coronavirus early. I had already had the New York Times tracking map open on my phone for a few days when we hit 100 cases. “What if I get stuck in Mexico over spring break? Can you imagine me emailing my professor? ‘Sorry, I won’t be in class, I’m stuck in coronavirus quarantine?’” I asked my roommate. It sounded ridiculous. At that point, almost all new cases in the US were still international-travel related. At that point, I really thought that I might end up in some federal quarantine trying to come back into the country— and part of me thought that sounded like a terrifying but incredible story to tell. Or what if, I wondered, the borders closed altogether and I spent the next few months in Mexico with the friends I’d made on the NOLS kayaking expedition I was going to go on.
“I think that’s going to become very common,” my roommate told me.
Fast forward a week. I was walking back from class and I got an email that my study abroad had been cancelled. No surprise there. I texted my family to let them know.
"You might want to think about cancelling NOLS, too," my dad said.
That threw me. Cancel my spring break, a week out? With no refund? Likely chance.
Fast forward to Wednesday. Italy was on lockdown. US cases were steadily climbing. My dad kept texting me, urging me to cancel my trip to Mexico.
I didn't want to. I couldn't imagine just going home for spring break, not when I'd had my bags packed for a week. Not when everyone I knew was so excited to hear about my adventure when we all got back to school. Not when I'd paid for it all with my own money and wouldn't get a refund.
I talked with some friends and some people I knew who had studied public health in college. "Am I a public health risk if I do this?" I asked, voicing the question that had kept me awake for the past few nights. "If I go to Mexico and fly through LAX, and if I get sick on the return trip and get someone in Austin sick who's at risk... is that on me?"
"I don't think so," my friends all said. "Everyone's traveling over spring break. It's not just you."
I'm going to go, I decided. If everyone's going on spring break, what's the difference I would make?
An hour later, my dad texted me an article. It was a statistical study looking at the coronavirus data from China and South Korea, as well as preliminary data and projections from Italy. It warned of the possible death toll in America if we did nothing.
"I know it sucks, but this is life or death," my dad said.
I called him on my way back to my dorm. "I saw what you sent," I said. "I read it. And I'm ready to acknowledge the logic and the facts, but first I need to voice my first response."
So for a few minutes I voiced my frustration. I had pretty much decided, in my heart, that I needed to cancel, but I needed to get it all out. I'd lose the money I'd paid. I wouldn't have an exciting spring break.
My dad was concerned that I'd get stuck in Mexico if they closed the border. I didn't think it seemed logical that they would shut the border, because at this point there was more coronavirus in the US than Mexico. And even if they did, I thought that sounded like a grand adventure, even if it did make my family nervous. What a story that would be!
No, my concern was bringing the disease somewhere. I wasn't worried about getting sick, and if I could have been thrown into some quarantine somewhere after the trip where I was guaranteed not to get anyone sick- not my family at home, not my roommate at school- I wouldn't have worried. But the airports? I wondered. The people I come into contact with? I wasn't concerned about getting sick, but if I passed the disease on to just one person, and that one person was hospitalized or died or lost their job or passed it on to someone else- wouldn't that be in part my responsibility?
If it could save just one life, I thought, I have to cancel. Whatever money I had paid would be inconsequential compared to someone's life. My fun spring break didn't matter in that case.
It's the same reason I have a reusable coffee cup and the same reason I choose to vote. I have to believe that the small things matter. I have to believe that it all adds up, that it all counts. Because I believe that every single life has meaning and that each and every one of us is treasured by a Father who loves us so deeply. And even if my part was small- even if all I could do was cancel a trip and stay inside and wash my hands and practice social distancing- I believed fully that I needed to do my own small part. I believe that it matters.
I came back that night feeling defeated. I put on my running shoes and went up to the gym in my dorm building. It was empty; a new shelving unit had appeared in the past few days, atop which was a bucket of gym wipes. I sanitized the elliptical, put on Taylor Swift's Lover album, and ran.
It was quite possibly the angriest and best workout of my life. For 35 minutes I ran all out, jamming to music, frustrated, thinking, praying. Jesus, why did you bring me here? I cried out in my head. Why did you bring me here just to leave me here?
After all of this- all of the back-and-forth trying to figure out NOLS, after the money I'd spent on flights and the excitement I'd shared with people about my plans- it was just going to be over? And I knew it was worth it, but I was still angry about it. I was so angry that my adventure wasn't going to happen after all. I blinked hot tears out of my eyes as I ran. After all of this, I was just going to have to go home?
And I knew Jesus doesn't call where He doesn't lead. I knew that He didn't bring me there just to leave me there, but for the life of me, I could not understand the point.
When I got down from the elliptical, the best answer I had come up with was that at least it was a beautiful chance to surrender. My roommate offered for me to come to their lakehouse with her and her family, and I agreed, making new plans at the spur of the moment, pivoting suddenly and getting excited about the new adventure I would have.
We kayaked every day at the lake. We would wake up late, eat breakfast, garden, make lunch, swim, and go explore the lake on kayaks and paddleboards. It was a lot like what I would have been doing in Mexico.
That Wednesday I had to go back to Dallas. My dad picked me up and we drove home, and I felt a great peace with going home that I hadn't felt since coming to college. It was for the rest of the semester; I knew that. I knew that things had escalated and were only getting worse, and that soon enough we'd be under lockdown, too. Now we are, and I'm glad to be home for it.
And even here I was hoping for an adventure, for something crazy to happen. I wanted a wild story to tell, but I found myself just doing exactly what all of my other friends were doing. I wasn't stuck in a quarantine in Mexico. I wasn't out on the front lines fighting the virus. I was just at home. In prayer, I asked Jesus why. Where is my adventure? I cried.
This is your adventure, He told me, and I kind of scoffed at that, because what kind of adventure is it sitting at home? I want to go places, do all kinds of crazy things- and I just have, in this moment, to trust that someday I will.
And why do I want to do something crazy so badly? I asked.
Katie, you still believe that your value is only in the stories you can tell- the things you've done and the things you will do. It is now where you learn to just be.
It's the biggest thing I've been praying about this semester. Learning that I'm a human being, not a human doing. That I matter, not because of the different things I am capable of, not because of my resume, but because I am a beloved daughter of the King of the Universe. And I thought of the story from Scripture of Mary and Martha, and that while it was beautiful that Martha busied herself making the house ready for Jesus, Mary sat and listened- and I realized that in my haste to make stories to tell, I forgot that I have value also in my ability to listen and just be.
I'm still set to go to Uruguay this summer. That's still going to be an adventure. I wondered if maybe I should cancel somehow so I would have the full summer to plan something else, but everything is so up in the air that it wouldn't matter anyhow. And if Jesus wants me to serve the people in Uruguay this summer, that's where I'll go. If He wants me to stay here and serve the people around me here, in my family and my friends, then that's where I'll be.
And I finally understood that Jesus brought me here, not to leave me here, but to bring me to greater surrender. I could have chosen still to go to Mexico. The borders actually did close the weekend I would have come back; I would have actually been stuck. My program did end up cancelling, but hey- I had the plane tickets. I could have fought to create the adventure I dreamed.
Instead, I learned to surrender more and to follow Jesus into something greater. To trust that He has a greater adventure planned for me than I can know- but that He wants to give it to me as a gift. He wants to surprise me with something beautiful that I can't even imagine. And the greatest adventure is not the one I can dream, because what kind of adventure is it if you have it all planned out in the first place?
No, the greatest adventure comes not in the wilderness but in the wildness of everyday life in Christ. The greatest adventure comes in a radical trust in the value of the present and the excitement of the future, and in the knowledge that the best is still yet to come but that the now is precious.
The greatest adventure is in the gift of every day with Jesus- whether that's at home or all the way across the world. The greatest adventure is this moment, right now.