MsBoyink has always been the navigator for our travels.
Many times she would climb into the passenger seat, wave vaguely out the windshield, and say "just start driving". I'd head in the general direction we wanted to go. She'd then lean the seat back, close her eyes, and begin a couple hours of intense mental processing about our exact route and destination.
Well, that's what she claimed anyway.
Eventually she'd rub her eyes open, straighten the seat up, check the map to see where we were, and then use her phone to find the next place for us to camp. She'd enter that into the GPS and I'd follow the prompts until we arrived.
Turns out, sometimes life is like that.
We want to know exactly where God wants us to be next. But He only provides a general direction. We need to just start driving. In faith. And in trust. At some point, later in the journey, He reveals the destination. And gives us the turn by turn directions to get us there.
Just Driving
Right now, we're just driving. In a general direction. God hasn't given us our destination yet.
So while I don't know where we are going, I do know where we just were.
And what we are leaving behind.
There are things we are happy to leave behind. Careers gone stale. Relationships gone distant.
And there are things we are sad to leave behind. A comfortable lifestyle. Known income streams.
And DitchingSuburbia.
The Thing About Endings
I generally suck at endings. I've kept cars until they couldn't drive away under their own power. I've stuck with outdated technologies because it was easier than learning the new thing.
But I've learned something. Mostly while eating ice cream. And while visiting certain places on our travels.
Always leave wanting more.
I know. It's not easy to quit in the middle of something good (note the lack of any half-eaten Reeses candy bars around our house).
But we've all enjoyed something too much. For me it was Fuzzy Navels while on a teenage Spring Break trip to Florida. MsBoyink had a college dorm-room encounter with a large Whitman sampler. Overindulging ruined us for enjoying those things in the future.
And so we come to the end of our time on DitchingSuburbia. Now, while we still want more. And while we can remember it all with fondness. And not with the Fuzzy Navel response I still have decades later.
New Beginnings
You know what comes along with an ending?
A new beginning.
Our time with DitchingSuburbia is over. But a new family will be using the site to tell their story of leaving normal behind and beginning life on the road.
The Best Family
Meet the best family to take over DitchingSuburbia.com (I know - I can never pass up a pun).
As for the Boyinks?
You can always find our contact information over on Boyink.com. Mike started a new "probably weekly" email newsletter which you can subscribe to there as well.
We may also contribute a guest post here - once we've arrived and settled in at whatever destination God has in mind for us.
See You Down the Road
Take care, my friends. I'm not Irish, but love these parting words:
May the road rise to meet you, may the wind be ever at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face, and the rains fall soft upon your fields. And until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of his hand.
In love,
the Boyink family.