There are only a few sights that instantly take me down memory lane and hot air balloons are one of them. Each time I catch a glimpse of one preparing for lift-off, I'm taken back to being a child. I remember the sound of my parents whispers as they were getting the car ready extra early on those special mornings. Then I would hear the creek of my bedroom door opening as they were coming in to get me out of bed. Usually this is a pretty tough task (unless I am the initiator of it) but the mornings when my brother and I got to watch the balloons take-off were well worth it. It was so much fun to sit on a blanket stretched over a field of grass and try to be the first to recognize the design of each balloon. And once they started getting more and more filled, they left quickly. As I strained my eyes to see them far off in the distance, I would wonder what it might be like to look down at the world below - how little everything would seem and yet how big at the same time.I was recalling this during my long drive back from a wedding in Kansas this weekend and I realized how closely these take-offs resemble each change in life. The first time my balloon made its journey away from Wichita, I found myself in Man-happenin' (Manhattan, KS). I learned so much about life, love and skipping class (sorry Mom and Dad :), but I couldn't wait to leave that place for the bigger places beyond. So, two days after graduation, my balloon planted me in Colorado and I'm so grateful for the past four years that I have been here. To make my home somewhere outside of the flat lands was in some ways hard task but now I crave the beautiful mountainside more than I ever thought I would when I'm gone. The joy of going for hikes in the coolness of morning and the silhouette of the mountains at sunset are two things that I hope I never take for granted.
So why the trip down memory lane? Well, I feel another change coming. Of course I don't know what it is but I feel it. The spontaneous part of me that longs for adventure is heightened with curiosity but the homebody in me is screaming for more time here. I love my friends, my house, my job and the comfort of familiarity. But another desire in me has been stirred. I long to travel far away and experience a new culture, not just for two weeks or two months, but for two or more years. After studying in East Asia for four months total while in college, I haven't been able to keep my heart from traveling back there without me.
All that said, I'm beginning the tough stuff. Beginning to understand what weights are keeping me grounded here and what it will take to throw them out of my basket. Beginning to explore opportunities that I might find far away from home. But more than anything, I'm beginning to surrender, because once a balloon takes off, only the wind knows where it will end up. As much as I might try to map out the direction that this balloon will go, I am dependent upon the wind to take me there. And in the wind, I will find the freedom to soar above the land, to see all that the world holds, and to be what I was created to be. And for that alone, being what I was created to be, makes all the pains of leaving a comfortable, mountainside home completely worth it.
