Tag: journey

The Joy of the Journey (aka The 10 Minute Nerf War)

~ Lisa Ancona-Roach ~ 3 Comments

For weeks, preparations, planning, and discussions about design and strategy took place. Something big was on the horizon, and my son and his good buddy were afire with how they wanted it to happen. The amount of time they dedicated to preparation was noteworthy—and so was the fun they had in doing it.

The event? A neighborhood Nerf war. A bunch of boys picked a date to have a shootout to decide who was #1 in the Nerf world on our street. The last man standing would be the winner. The boys wanted to make sure they were prepared, and so they really got into it. My son wanted to buy a $30 vest that would hold his Nerf gear. After he heard a very clear and resounding “no” that definitely had the tone of “are you out of your flippin’ mind?” he realized he needed to follow his father’s and my suggestion to create what he needed. What followed was a wonderful think tank of my son and his friend. I just loved watching their imaginations catch fire. They did indeed come up with some very clever answers to their needs, and they were proud of their handiwork.

After a few weeks of strategizing and creating, they were ready. It was finally the afternoon of the showdown. This is where all of their hard work was leading…

 

Nerf

 

Ready…aim…fire!

It was over in ten minutes.

Who won is not important. (Okay, it was my kid.) They kind of giggled at how fast it all went down—but there was no regret in any of it. Not in the time they took to prepare or the speed in which it all culminated…Because all of it was fun.

As kids, so much of the fun is in the planning and anticipating. The actual thing is often secondary. I’m sometimes guilty of keeping my kid on a “need to know” basis (usually because I just forget), but he has told me that he wishes I would tell him about things earlier so that he is not only aware of it but can look forward to it, too. So I’m trying to remember not to be so scatterbrained (a bit of a catch-22) so that my son can have more joy of anticipation. And I think his desire for that is wonderful.

I can remember plenty of times when I was a kid where the figuring out and the setting up was so much of the fun—sometimes the main part. My friend Jen and I would decide we were going “camping,” so we would engineer a make-shift tent with a tarp and poles—we never much went for the store bought stuff because…what fun was that? And we would finally get it all set up and hang out in it just for a bit before it was time to take it all down and go in for dinner. And that was just fine with us.

 

a classic blanket fort
a classic blanket fort from a few years back

 

I remember one time my sister and I were building forts in our basement. There were different sections to the basement, and one of them was a nice little room with a TV and a couple sofas. She claimed she wanted that space, so of course, I wanted it, too. I felt so victorious when she gave in and said I could have it. Ah-HA! I got the great room! And so I flopped on the sofa and watched some TV…but I could hear my sister very busy on the other end of the basement. I peeked over in curiosity and saw that she had half of the Ping-Pong table down and had covered it with blankets. Light was emanating from underneath. I had to go check it out. Sure enough, my sister had built an awesome fort with its own groovy light and everything! My victory was hollow…the real fun was had in building the fort and then hanging out in it. Being the generous sister, though, she did let me look inside her fort to see how cool it was, but then she told me I had to go back to my place. Ah, big sisters…

Certainly there are plenty of times where the destination is by far the biggest slice of the pie, but even then we must not forget the journey. Yes, a long car ride to an amusement park or a nerve-wracking flight to vacation may not be the best of journeys to savor, but they still merit appreciation.

 

map

 

A life lived in the “are we there yet?” mentality will mean that only bits and pieces of life will truly be lived and enjoyed.

That is simply not enough.

If you read my recent crossroads post, you know that I am at the beginning of a journey in which I do not know the destination. Naturally, as an adult with responsibilities, this puts a ton of additional stress on me. But even during this anxious time, I know I need to be more like the kid I was who truly felt the value of the dream as the dream…of the journey as the destination.

If all I do is look and pray for the end game, then I may once again find myself quickly maneuvering for the basement TV room rather than the wonderful Ping-Pong fort.

And this time around…I really want to enjoy building the fort.

 

All photos are my own.
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Standing at a Crossroads

~ Lisa Ancona-Roach ~ 14 Comments

My husband and I have an unspoken list of movies that we see over and again, particularly late at night when we should be mature and get some rest, but instead we watch the last hour of Braveheart or Shawshank Redemption. It’s a codependent sickness—or gift—depending on your perspective.

One of those movies is Cast Away. I’m going to assume most of you have seen it at this point, but if you haven’t and intend to, then…what are you waiting for? The movie is 14 years old. Consider this a spoiler alert, because I am going to talk about the ending of the movie.

After four years keeping himself alive on a deserted island, in large part keeping the will to live by remembering his fiancé back home, Tom Hanks’ character, Chuck Noland, is rescued only to find that his fiancé has moved on…like marriage-with-another-guy and already-has-a-child moved on. Sometimes I want to slap Helen Hunt. All that in four years? As it turns out, she loves Chuck, but she’s not leaving her marriage.

 

map

 

Chuck now has to figure out what this new—and very different—world holds for him, and he drives off not knowing at all what that may be. Near the very end of the movie, he is standing—literally—at a crossroads. It is a wide open space from which to decide. He gets a little bit of a nudge when the beautiful woman who belongs to the last package he delivered stops and lets him know where each road leads. His smile indicates that he just may choose the same one that she heads down.

 

you are here_w dot

 

I was pretty young when I recognized that my life was meant to be lived in chapters, particularly in my work life. I realized it is just who I am. Several chapters have already been written, but now, I, too, stand at a crossroads.

This crossroads was not one I headed toward on my own, and so I can relate to Hanks’ character looking into the vast unknown and scratching his head.

I’m no longer in my 20s with my life ready to unfold…there’s been plenty of unraveling already. But…so what? What does that really mean? I love the quote that writer Connie Schultz shared about a friend of hers who was going into med school at 42. People said to her, “but you’ll be 50 by the time you are a doctor…” Her response? “I’m going to be 50 someday anyway. I may as well be 50 and a doctor.”

Time is all in how you approach it, right?

Of course, there is no promise of tomorrow.

Just last night I was looking over a tribute page on Facebook of those from my high school class who are no longer with us. Well over a dozen—and that’s just the ones that were shared on the tribute page. Lives cut short from what we assume to be an “average” life span. But no one’s life is average.

You really can’t assume you have an allotted amount of time in this world, and that’s why I get so frustrated with myself when I feel as though I am letting it slip away.

 

clock of life

 

Time is the great leveler. Some people are rich, some poor, some quick-minded, some fleet of foot. But everyone gets exactly 24 hours in a day (or 23 hours, 56 minutes, 4.0916 seconds for you literalists out there). What we do with our equal allotment is up to us.

So…which road to take? In fact, where are the roads?

The white noise that floods my head on a daily basis makes it a little challenging to figure out what my next right step is, but I am searching for the quiet in order to better hear the Answer to which path is meant for me.

If God could program my GPS, that would help, but so far he hasn’t worked that way. So far he has given me an internal compass that I need to follow. I just need to pull away from the metal interference that is jamming my reading, and perhaps then I’ll see my true north.

For each of us who face one kind of a crossroads or another, the decisions that must come from it are often not easy to make. The more you have traveled, the more baggage (both good and bad) you carry. The more baggage, the more to consider. The more to consider, the more complicated the choice. But while it is not easy, it is a choice that must be made—otherwise you will simply be left in the middle of the road scratching your head. And sooner or later, you’re going to get hit by a truck and who wants that?

And so I find myself staring at my map and figuring out my direction.

It is indeed a journey—and one I am blessed to travel—even when the path remains yet to be seen. 

 

 “…I know what I have to do now. I gotta keep breathing. Because tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring?”

~Chuck Noland (Tom Hanks) in Cast Away

 

All photos are my own.
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Recalculating the Best Laid Plans

~ Lisa Ancona-Roach ~ 2 Comments

plane motor“You know what the three most exciting sounds in the world are? Anchor chains, plane motors, and train whistles.” Now, before you go rolling your eyes at another post of mine that incorporates It’s a Wonderful Life in it, just give me a chance.

As my regular readers may know, I feel strongly about this film for many reasons— in fact, I’m pretty sure I could write a book on all that this movie speaks to me about life, and maybe someday I will.

But today I want to talk about how life plays out so differently from what we may plan.

I don’t know about you, but when I was young, I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted my life to look like. So did George Bailey. In fact, his plan was similar to mine…steam-locomotive-whistle

“I know what I’m gonna do tomorrow and the next day and the next year and the year after that,” he told his then unbeknownst-to-him future wife, Mary. “I’m shaking the dust of this crummy little town off my feet and I’m gonna see the world!”

When I was a year or two younger than the age George was when he uttered those lines, I was in college thinking about what market I would start my career in. My plan was to work in television or film production and go anywhere the work would take me. I distinctly remember driving through Nashville on a trip and thinking, “this seems like it could be a good place to start…”

signs

But within months, the turn my life was about to take would make that thought unimaginable.

In a little over a year from thinking Nashville might be the place for me, my dad would be diagnosed with cancer and pass into life eternal.

While George’s world became holding down the fort of the Bailey Bros Building and Loan after his dad died, I had other, less tangible forts of my own to hold down.

And neither George nor I shook the dust and saw the world the way we planned.

porchain

So what did we do?

Truth is, depending on the day, the answer varies.

As life plays itself out, there is meaning to be made of the twists and turns of our best laid plans. But there is also frustration and even resentment that God is not following the directions on my turn-by-turn navigation.

I mean, come on—I had some great ideas! And, truthfully, the fact that God has better ideas is not always easily identifiable.

Where my itinerary had travel and adventure, God’s had responsibility and sacrifice. Mine still sounds way more fun, doesn’t it?

And there are many, many other twists and turns that continue to come my way, as there are for most of us. It seems like right when I get my new route together, I can hear God say “recalculating…”

gps 2

And his path is not necessarily a smooth one. Bumps, potholes, hairpin turns…where am I headed?

This certainly does not mean that I am merely on a path with none of my own choices. No—we are not God’s robots—but it does mean that I need to acknowledge that I am not in actual control. I can only be responsible for me and not my circumstances.

I must simply do my best and trust that the ultimate Navigator is leading me to the Destination I was meant for. Something I could not see with just my own vision.

George learned that his little town was far from “crummy,” and that the impact he had was deeper than he ever knew or could have planned for.

And here I am, at a place in my life that I never would have planned for myself—juggling a myriad of life changes and challenging circumstances—needing to remember that my GPS is divine, and that I simply need to trust and take the next best turn laid out for me.