Find your balance!

But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added to you."
-Mathew 6:33

One thing people know about me and my beautiful wife is that we do not do things as perceived as normal. Our beat is to a different drummer, often times it seems like the drummer is a highly caffeinated, blind octopus playing 4 sets of drums at once... Regardless we still dance.

I bring this up because we are newly weds, and we did not start our marriage like most newly weds do. Most get married and use up one week of vacation time or sick days for a justifiable uber expensive and carefree relaxation vacation. Then return home to the same lives they left only with bands on their fingers and wedding pictures on the walls of their New Home.
They can wake up next to each other everyday, eat some breakfast and read the Bible together, how precious, then off to work for the day only to return to their beautiful new home with their beautiful new spouse.

Honestly that sounds pretty good right about now...

For my wife and I our first day of marriage started at 4am the day after a rager of a dance party in a barn that I guess we call our wedding. 4am and a plane to catch. We were not to return to the Good ole USA for 3-4,5,6,7,8... Months. Oh and to return back to the states with no jobs, no "new home", and no worries.

We embarked on this journey that for the first 3 weeks we considered "honeymoon" because we were staying in time shares in Orlando, Austria, and Greece. Ahhh luxury. Kinda. We knew that after those 3 weeks we still had 15 stops all over Europe yet to make. So even though we were in resorts we weren't necessarily living the luxury life because we only spent between $40-50 on groceries and one dinner out. We needed this money to stretch for the rest of the trip.

This trip is so important to us not because we like to travel and we want to see a new part of the world but because we want to make a difference. Little by little day by day we want to love others better than we love ourselves. It has been amazing, the people we've met, the things we've seen, and the stories we've heard. God is truly relevant even across a big blue ocean.

We are trying to go to so many places so fast on such a slim budget that we have spent more time thinking about how we are getting to our next stop for as cheap as possible and where are we staying and what is there to do there??? Rather than being in Florence, Italy, for example,and live in the day, in the moment and experience everything it has to offer and take in the culture and to take in the differenceness of it. Every place is different and has a differenceness to it. Same with people, we all have a differenceness to us. How are you using yours?

Anyway our focus started to shift; what started out as a missions trip focused on Christ and others became a battle of focus to stretch a dollar and use creative transportation.

Here is what we have learned through all of this. Since the beginning the focus has never been about us, and that is where our problem started.
My wife, the beautiful goddess holding my hand as we run from bus to train to car to plane, is my very best friend and I have been too focused on "what place is next? or "what can we do for that homeless man on the corner?" or "what is God teaching me?" That I have not even taken the time to look to my side and see her beautiful face and her even more beautiful heart.

We learned that marriage is hard. Why? Because, as stated above, we have many things going on. As I like to say "A lot of life is happening all at once."
Like this trip, marriage or life for that matter is a balancing act. We have many focus points and it's how we prioritize them that can get us out of wack. We need to figure out travel plans and sleep accommodation, and to remember our budget, for us and for our missions trip, we need to focus on random acts of kindness and making a difference in people's lives daily, we need to find our "new home" in the States, we both need solid full time jobs when we return, and most importantly we need to keep God at the center and focus on Him and being attentive to his daily blessings and guidance. While spinning all of those plates, sometimes they fall, we forgot the most important thing about a marriage, the people in it... We forgot to focus on each other.

People always say missions trips are life changing and you learn so much. Truth. You learn things you didn't even know needed to be known in ways you never knew but now you know.

It has been hard but we are beyond thankful for the lessons thus far and this being the biggest one: We need a balance.
It is a constant need and sometimes struggle but once you get in a rhythm and find your balance then life is pretty beautiful. We learned to balance our marriage, our trip, our home life, and above all our Focus on the Almighty God!