Why would you jump out of a perfectly good airplane?

That’s the question people ask you when you announce that you are going skydiving.

And in a sense, it’s what we are doing now. Jumping out of a perfectly good airplane. We love our community. I can walk across the street and help myself to a beer out of Dan’s fridge whether he’s home or not. Ashley would watch our dog any time we needed it. I can ask for help with a project and have six volunteers before an hour has gone by.

I have a doctor I trust and a hardware store just up the street. Miles of biking trails through well-kept parks and half a dozen lakes within walking distance.

We raised our kids, started businesses and built a life here on Little Road, and never, ever tired of telling people, “You know, it’s really quite an average-sized road.”

So why leave?

I’ve jumped out of a perfectly good airplane before. Both Karen and I tried skydiving when we were in our 20s, and here’s the thing…

When you step out of that plane, your eyes are wide open. Your senses are heightened. You notice every little thing, from the rush of the wind, to that tiny little airplane slipping out of sight and into the clouds. For just a glorious moment, you see the world in a new way and you understand your own smallness in it.

We don’t feel the need to hang beneath another parachute, but we want to feel that sense of perspective again. That sense of wonder. The eye-opening experience that comes from moving outside of your comfort zone and discovering new things about yourself, each other, and the world around you. You can’t do that from an armchair.

We are living in historic times. Headlines boggle the mind and our hurting world is in desperate need of healing. It’s not enough to read about it. It’s time to be in it. So as Karen and I leave our house, we will become semi- nomadic. We’ll pull a trailer and that will become our home. We will park it where there are stories to tell. We are setting out to gather a new series of stories from across the country called Cry Out…Voices calling for radical love and justice in a broken world.

It’s going to be a journey of discovery and if it goes the way I expect, one story will lead to the next. Each story a single thread, weaving into a bigger fabric of who we are and how we can live better together.

It’s how I’ve come to understand the world. By being in it. To learn and love and listen along the way.

On the one hand, it’s probably arrogant to think that A Peace of My Mind can do anything to bring about healing in a world as broken as this. But on the other hand, it’s probably foolish not to try. It’s time to do our little part.

And so today we say goodbye to Little Road. And hello to the big highway.