” Well, three years ago we had an apartment here in the States but were driving all around meeting with people everyday and staying in different places, and then we moved in with my parents before packing our life into a storage unit and moving to Asia, and then we had a place and a routine starting there after a while but came back for the summer and lived again with my parents and tried to meet with more people and figure out how to get a year’s worth of refrigerated injections over to Asia – which worked out just days before we flew back to Asia amidst a lot of relational strain and stress, but we made it, sadly just in time for Matt to become more and more sick and the stresses to grow and the decision made that we needed to move back to the States, so… we are here, but we lived with my parents for a month again and now are staying in a another house that was graciously offered to us but isn’t our permanent home yet – which, by the way what address should we give you? – but oh, yes, we hope to have a place soon in the next month or two that you can actually send us mail to…”

(Take breath now, Tayler)

We sat in front of the doctor and tried to sum up the last few years of our life. That’s something like the conversation went. And during that conversation I think for the first time I embraced …

 

“We are crazy.”

 

 

Oh, I’d said it when I zip-lined over a this insanely deep gorge in Ecuador, and I’d said it after I graduated and decided to be a “missionary”, and I’d said it when I married my husband after a five month engagement and I’d said it as I clenched the armrest of the airplane seat as we moved our life across the world. I feel like I know “Crazy” pretty well. But there was something about summing up a portion of our life and evaluating it that made “Crazy” even more poignant that day.

I have ached for routine and a place to settle and a home that is a home for many years (insert last post). Those are good things – things we probably need right now, honestly. But then I started thinking about it maybe a little too deeply – doing the same things, having one place, striving after the same old same old of everyone else. My skin started to crawl. I CAN’T. I CAN’T LIVE A BORING LIFE.

(When I was younger I would come into the living room and lay on the couch and say to my mom, “I’m SO boreddddd.What is there to do?” I couldn’t stand it! I begged to be rescued from boredom.)

 

 

“We are crazy.”

And I love it. I’m so proud of the steps of faith I have taken in life that were absolutely crazy in the moment. I can’t believe where they have taken me. I’m so proud of Matt and I going for it and following not just a dream, but a conviction to live in a another culture and learn it and love people there. I’m so proud of you for so many crazy things you have probably done!

 

 

A lot has changed in our life in the past three months (reference the above). We moved back from Asia to the States to get a better grasp on Matt’s life with Crohn’s disease. Now we live in the middle of nowhere and hope to get a house that we may very well live in for most of our life.

Maybe this is the beginning of settling.

Maybe this will be our home for a long while.

Maybe I won’t step foot on a plane in what feels like forever.

Maybe I will have to say goodbye to “Crazy”.

In some ways, yes, thankfully. But once you’ve tasted what it’s like to step out in crazy, how can you ever go back? And I am not talking about crazy travel adventures or a crazy busy life alone.

Check out this definition for “crazy”:

“distracted with desire or excitement”

I. feel. so. known. Thank you, Merriam-Webster. My desires feel limitless and my excitement comes so often for so many things that I feel like the images that come up when you Google search “crazy”.
(Please, go ahead)

And once again, I love it. I can’t stop.The author, C.S. Lewis, writes:

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

 

 

This is why I can’t live a boring life. I’ve tasted infinite joy – I’ve stepped out in crazy. But I don’t think it’s about desiring more from that next adventure or that next way of entertainment alone. I think it’s why I wanted to start Life Well Wondered. I think it’s finding the wonder in even the littlest things and most boring moments – a wonder that is crazy – a wonder that is distracted with desire and excitement that makes day to day life extraordinary whether that life is traveling the world or living in the middle of nowhere – whether that life is posting gorgeous photos on Instagram or barely looking good enough to walk out the door each day – whether that life the most popular or the least noticed. It doesn’t matter.

 

“We are crazy.”