“You are so lucky. You get to travel all over the country and live in an RV.”
I cannot count the number of times we’ve heard someone say that to us.
And honestly, I wouldn’t argue with them.
We are blessed.
We are blessed to have a camper and a truck to pull it. We’re blessed to have seen places that some people only dream of visiting. We’ve met people from all over the country, stood in churches we probably never would have otherwise seen, and experienced things I never imagined would be part of our life.
I’m thankful for it.
But there is something people don’t always see.
Blessed doesn’t mean easy.
The part people don’t see
Living in an RV and traveling from church to church sounds pretty exciting when you’re looking at it from the outside.
And sometimes it is.
We are living our dream.
I still find myself pinching myself, knowing that this is our life.
The young girl who never thought she would ever see California, or fly on an airplane, now does it all.
But there’s another side to it.
It’s exhausting.
There are the miles.
The packing.
The unpacking.
The constant change.
The never really feeling settled.
And then there is ministry.
My husband isn’t just traveling around the country for fun. He is preaching.
And when you love someone who carries that responsibility, you carry some of it too.
We think about the people who come to the meetings.
We think about the people who don’t.
We wonder if we said something wrong.
We wonder if we could have done something differently.
We wonder if someone understood what they needed to hear.
And sometimes we leave a place and wonder if anything we did made a difference at all.
We carry people with us
One of the hardest things about ministry is realizing that you can love people deeply and still not be able to change their choices.
We have met people who genuinely touched our hearts.
We’ve prayed with people.
We’ve listened to their stories.
We’ve watched people make decisions that brought us so much joy.
And we’ve also heard heartbreaking news.
Someone we cared about has stopped coming to church.
Someone we prayed for is struggling.
Someone who seemed to be doing so well has walked away.
And even though we know that ultimately every person has to make their own choices, that doesn’t mean you don’t hurt.
We do.
We wonder if we could have done more.
We wonder what we missed.
Sometimes we carry those questions long after we’ve left town.
And for the most part, we’re alone
This is probably the part people understand the least.
When you’re traveling, you meet a lot of people.
But meeting people isn’t the same thing as having people.
We can walk into a church and be surrounded by people we’ve never met.
We can preach, talk, eat together, laugh together and spend an entire day with people.
And then we get back in our camper and it’s just us again.
The next week may be another church.
Another town.
Another group of people.
Another goodbye.
Sometimes I miss having people who have known us for years.
People who want to celebrate the holidays with us.
People who show up at a moment’s notice because they know we’re hurting.
People who know when something is wrong just by looking at us.
There is a loneliness that can come with always being somewhere new.
And I don’t think you realize how much you miss having roots until you don’t have them.
But I wouldn’t trade it
And this is where I don’t want this to sound like a complaint.
Because it isn’t.
I can tell you about the hard parts and still be incredibly thankful for this life.
We’ve had experiences that I wouldn’t trade.
We’ve met people who will always be part of our story.
We’ve watched God open doors we never could have opened ourselves.
We’ve seen prayers answered.
We’ve seen people find hope.
We’ve seen lives changed.
And we’ve seen God’s people show up for us in ways we’ll never forget.
So yes.
We are lucky.
We are blessed.
But sometimes I wish people understood that blessing and struggle can exist at the same time.
You can be grateful and exhausted.
You can love your life and still have hard days.
You can know you’re exactly where God wants you and still wonder if you’re doing enough.
You can be surrounded by people and still feel lonely.
You can be incredibly blessed and still break down sometimes.
Those things don’t cancel each other out.
Maybe that’s true for all of us
I think we do this to each other sometimes.
We look at someone’s life from the outside and see the blessing.
We see the house.
The marriage.
The children.
The job.
The travel.
The ministry.
The answered prayer.
And we think, They have it made.
But we don’t see what happens after the picture is taken.
We don’t see the tears.
The fear.
The exhaustion.
The unanswered questions.
The things they’re carrying quietly.
Maybe that’s something I’m learning as I get older.
Be careful about assuming you know someone’s life because you can see the beautiful parts of it.
There is almost always more to the story.
So yes, tell me we’re blessed.
Because we are.
I’ll smile and agree with you.
But I’ll also tell you this:
Sometimes the most blessed people you know are struggling too.
And maybe that’s okay.
Maybe we were never promised an easy life.
Maybe we were simply promised that we wouldn’t have to walk it alone.
And even on the lonely days, I’m learning to trust that God is still there.
Still leading.
Still working.
Still carrying what I can’t.
And soon we’ll hook up the truck, pull out of the campground, and head toward wherever we’re going next.
Blessed?
Absolutely.
Easy?
Not always.
But ours.
And I’m thankful for it.
Last Updated on 5 days ago by Crystal Carder