Have you ever wanted to grab your family, pack a suitcase, hit the road, and escape the crazy rat race? Me too! Tsh Oxenreider and her family did just that…hit the road for a year and travelled the world. She writes about their adventures in her newest book At Home in the World: Reflections on Belonging While Wandering the Globe. This book was a great read! I loved hearing about the parts of the trip that fulfilled the idealistic adventure we all think it will be…just as much as I loved hearing about the parts that didn’t go so great…the real stuff!
I’m grateful that we live in a time in history where it is so easy to travel the world and to make connections globally. Our kids are 9 and 5 and we love that they love to travel just as much as we do. I’m not sure that I see us taking a year to travel the world, but we sure are committed to taking advantage of every bit of free time to do just that. I’m one of those people that has to have at least one or two trips coming up at all times. We are grateful that we are blessed to be able to do that financially and we don’t take that for granted. We are always ready to hit the road!
I don’t completely agree with everything in this book, nor would I ever agree completely with any author on every point…but there are more than enough places of agreement to make it worth my time and yours to give it a read. I highlighted several things while reading and have posted those notes below…
- Traveling makes one modest—you see what a tiny place you occupy in the world. —Gustave Flaubert Location: 347
- I begin the monastic prayer I learned six months ago at the Ignatian monastery in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where a woman named Nora taught me letting go would do me well: Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me. Rinse and repeat. Location: 365
- I was infected with an incurable sense of wanderlust, but I was also a homebody. I matured into adulthood when I acknowledged this truth. Location: 406
- Nobody seems to embark on a massive journey because their lives are already full of meaning. Location: 464
- Our bags, like life, have finite capacity. If something comes in, something else must stay behind. Location: 488
- What a tiny place I occupy in the world. Location: 519
- Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all of one’s lifetime. —Mark Twain Location: 531
- This world is huge; it is majestic; it is worth exploring just for the sake of knowing it. Location: 580
- You’re in China, which is hard. But you can do hard things. You won’t be here long. This month is the foundation for the year. Lean in to the struggles; give thanks for the easy times. Hard doesn’t mean wrong. You’re on the right path. Location: 629
- The greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time. —Bill Bryson Location: 1,223
- For what you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing: it also depends on what sort of person you are. —C. S. Lewis Location: 1,749
- Nobody can discover the world for someone else. Only when we discover it for ourselves does it become common ground and a common bond and we cease to be alone. —Wendell Berry Location: 1,943
- He who works with his hands is a laborer. He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman. He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist. Location: 3,111
- I think for a minute. “Yes. True. But . . . they’re honestly one of the main reasons we are traveling now. We want to show them the world while they’re young. The earlier they see the world, the more normal it is for them. And the younger they start traveling, the better travelers they become.” Location: 3,136
- God, why do I have both wanderlust and a yearning for home? Location: 3,607
- Wanderlust and my longing for home are birthed from the same place: a desire to find the ultimate spot this side of heaven. When I stir soup at my stove, I drift to a distant island. When I’m on the road with my backpack, my heart wanders back to my couch, my favorite coffee cup. My equal pull between both are fueled by my hardwired desire for heaven on earth. And I know I’ll never find it. Location: 3,611
- Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey. —Pat Conroy Location: 3,723
- Traveling means touching, tasting, smelling the world. It means the chance to explore hamlets and boroughs that citizens the world over call home. Through travel, you can know, firsthand, the difference in taste between the bread in Sri Lanka and Turkey. You’ll add years to your life with more layers, thicker skin, and a softer heart because of it. Travel is a gift. Location: 3,745
- Wanderlust is never truly quenched—as C. S. Lewis famously penned, “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.” Location: 3,822