Last Updated on August 27, 2024 by Chris and Lindsay
Hello Friend,
They say that time flies when you’re having fun… I think that time flies, period! This is why we try to make the most of every day and opportunity, including the one that brought us back to Custer State Park in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
Although deciding to return here was one of the most difficult decisions we have made in the last 6+ years on the road, the journey here was even more challenging and it brought to mind a topic that Lindsay and I have been struggling with for the past year and a half or so as we have tried to “plan” simple things for our future.
What is God’s will for our lives? And how do we know if we’re living it out?
Note: Lindsay and I are unapologetically Christian. But we’re not in-your-face “Bible-beating” Christians. We see the world through the lens of our faith, and thus it is impossible to share our updates with you without leaning into this faith. We hope our perspective and insights encourage you, regardless of your spiritual beliefs, and provide a genuine but gentle view of what we hope we present as a genuine Christian lifestyle – albeit one far from convention!
If you don’t see the world as we do, you might make decisions based on T-charts that compare the pros and cons of different options or the outcome of complicated mathematical formulas on spreadsheets. Maybe you throw a dart at the wall of options, choose at random or live carefree enough that the consequences of one decision don’t crush you if things don’t turn out how you thought they would.
Over the years, we’ve been a bit of all of the above when making decisions. Like many Christians and others who question the faith, we often “sought, knocked, and asked” God for implicit instructions on navigating certain decisions. Still, we were frustrated when we did not get a response from a burning bush or a booming voice from heaven.
So, decision-making always included a fair amount of paralysis and overthinking, taking T-charts and spreadsheets to the extreme while feeding doubts that God would show up to instruct us in the exact steps to take.
This was our March, April, and May as we wrestled with whether it would be possible for us financially, mechanically, emotionally, and otherwise to pursue Lindsay’s “Fishing All Fifty” journey to memorialize her father on an epic fishing road trip. I have shared in previous newsletters, with embarrassingly honest detail, the struggles that we had and, more specifically, the challenges that I had in taking on the weight of such a decision.
I won’t revisit the catastrophic loss we experienced between November and March that led to our doubts. But needless to say, the financial wind was taken out of our sails. We were pressed to decide whether we had enough trust in our decision that we could “go for broke” (literally), beginning the journey in May, not knowing whether we’d grow a large enough audience to support our travels beyond August or September.
Our decision to postpone the trip indefinitely came at the expense of a breakdown I had – emotionally, mentally and spiritually – where the choice was clear. I would not be capable of making the journey until I addressed some underlying issues and learned to trust God truly.
It’s easy to say, “I trust God,” or “I know God will provide.” Looking back at our last six years on the road, it is very clear that God did provide for us through miraculous intervention at times and by bringing incredible people into our lives (including you!).
But truly embracing such trust in God and truly believing that God will provide are two different things. In America, we live in such a simple state that we (collectively) are easily upset when our vehicle breaks down, the kids don’t behave in public, our boss or co-workers don’t appreciate us and so forth. We look for “outs” and engage in decision-making processes constantly at what I feel is a superficial level compared to most of the world.
We have friends in ministries across the globe who work with people who would love to face the challenge of deciding whether to remain in Florida or travel to South Dakota for a season. Instead, they’re deciding whether they have enough food to feed their families, how to get a job when they have been “blacklisted” in their community or what to do in the face of far worse persecution over their faith, ethnic or cultural background.
Our Recent Decisions
So, what have we learned about decision-making after making the biggest decision in the recent past? How have we determined God’s will for us and how to know when we are living in that?
We remove fear, doubt, and anxiety from the circumstance and focus on our relationship with the Living God we believe is omnipotent (everywhere, at all times), sovereign (all-knowing), and 100% Love.
Then, we do our best to choose a path that we believe will lead us closer to God, trusting that all the other details will fall into place accordingly.
Although our meandering journey over the past 6 years has seemed random at times, we have learned to be very intentional in making decisions that lead from one adventure to the next. We’ve adopted the philosophy we must share now: that we believe that God is with us regardless of our choice.
If God is all of the things I listed above, then choosing a path that leads us closer to Him is all we must concern ourselves with. So we look for Love in our decisions, trying to envision which direction will lead us toward a greater opportunity to know Him more and share the abundance of what we experience with others.
What led to the decision to return to South Dakota?
So, how did our decision to return to Custer State Park work out? Was God really present in the outcome and did this decision lead to the opportunity to love others the way He loves us?
Well, it’s complicated.
When we broke down in downtown Atlanta in April, we learned from the mechanic that the motorhome was a ticking time bomb with the next major repair. Instead of waiting for that to happen, we found a mechanic in Jacksonville who could do the work. But it was a favor for a friend of ours and the deal was that he would do his best to repair it and could not commit to a timeline.
Since we didn’t know when we’d get our beloved “Pavement Princess” back, we spent all of May and most of June in a holding pattern. We sensed that a return to South Dakota was the best decision but didn’t have any control over when we could leave. We waited patiently, wondering if any other work opportunities would arise in the meantime in Jacksonville or elsewhere.
So when we got the keys back to our motorhome toward the end of June, we felt restless for the road and the 2,000 miles that led north and west toward Custer State Park.
Instead of driving 12-15 hours per day as usual for our long hauls, we decided to settle on 8-10 hours and spread the journey over 4-5 days. And because temperatures were unusually high, we planned to camp each night in a formal campground where we could have power hookups to run the air conditioner instead of sliding into a Cracker Barrel or Bass Pro Shop and sweating through the night.
The plan was set. The motorhome was ready. We bid farewells to family and friends and hit I-10 west toward Tallahassee before turning north into Alabama, targeting just short of Tupelo, Mississippi, for our first night. Everything felt great being back on the road.
I was homesick at first, wondering if it was regret in leaving or perhaps the sinking feeling of having made the wrong decision. But as is the case every time we leave Florida, that feeling fell away one mile at a time as we drove on toward our destiny out west.
The following morning, we drove through Memphis in what is my least favorite stretch of driving in pretty much all of America. I think the roads knew my disdain because just before we crossed the Mississippi River into Arkansas, the dashboard lit up with all sorts of lights I had not seen before.
It was frustrating because we had just serviced the engine and every other thing we could think that might pose a future issue. But lights unrelated to anything we had serviced popped on for some reason.
We have an engine code reader, an investment we advise anyone with an RV to own, but it did not pull up any codes. So we limped into a Bass Pro Shop parking lot on the Tennessee side of the river, and I checked the engine bay for any signs of issues. Lindsay pulled up all sorts of research from forums discussing the lights, and we called our mechanic friend, who told us not to worry “too much” about the lights.
I’m the kind of guy who wonders what “too much” might be concerning worry. But I trust our friend with my life, and with that of my wife, my pups, and all of my possessions that we pack and carry on our 6 wheels.
So we carried on from Memphis with the lights turning off every time we stopped the engine and turning on intermittently, sometimes after restarting the motorhome.
In my analysis of the dash light situation,, I could not find any logical explanation. Sometimes, the light would take a few minutes or miles to turn on. Other times, I’d drive half the day before it turned back on.
Don’t worry too much, I thought. Everything else seemed to be OK, and nothing had fallen off the RV as far as I could tell. But I still wondered if we had made the wrong decision to leave Florida.
Was this God giving us a reason to turn around? Or perhaps we were being attacked spiritually by the enemy as we drove toward our destiny and the purpose awaiting us in South Dakota.
We made good time despite stopping for rest more often than we usually would during our long hauls. On the third night, we settled into camp in a small town called Gothenburg, Nebraska. Unless you’re from nearby, you’ve likely never heard of it and wouldn’t know it existed until reading about it.
Lindsay found a quiet campground at the edge of town a few miles from Interstate 80. The following day, this would make for a short 350-mile drive into Custer State Park.
We were in no rush and settled in by early evening. The cottonwood trees were shedding and the air was filled with drifts of seed floating past. When sunset approached, we were treated to a lightning bug (fireflies) show like no other. Tens of thousands of these little lanterns flashed on and off between the drifting cottonwood seeds, and it felt like a scene from a movie, the kind where there is either a happy ending or some eerie turn of events and an otherwise quiet town turns into a nightmare.
I checked the weather before falling asleep. There was a zero percent chance of rain, a welcomed relief considering the Midwest was known for its catastrophic weather patterns in spring and early summer. With this knowledge in hand, there was no reason not to sleep soundly, wake up late to walk the dogs and return to our campsite beneath the Ponderosa Pines in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
Then the hail started. It was 2 AM when the first thud hit the roof. Then, the steady beating on our roof continued for half an hour. It was so loud in the camper that Lindsay and I couldn’t hear each other five feet away. The dogs took cover as best they could, crouching on either side of Lindsay and burying their heads beneath the blanket.
I got up and started pacing the camper, unsure of what to do. The zero percent chance of rain had turned into a crazy storm that we learned later had formed just a few miles south of town and rained itself out a few miles north of town.
For now, we were in the thick of it, and all Lindsay and I could think about was the time we had survived golfball and baseball-sized hail in Wyoming, which shattered our camper vents and let water pour into our home.
I thought about our 2010 Honda CRV hitched to the rear of our RV. With a sunroof and fully exposed windshield, I expected it to be shattered. I imagined water pouring into the vehicle, the nicest one Lindsay or I have ever owned, which we took great care of.
When my imagination was too much, I grabbed a towel to throw over my head (as if that would protect me from the hail!) and I stepped out to see how big the hail was and if the CRV was holding up.
My foot went into the water nearly 18” deep as a new issue presented itself. There was a flash flood in the campground, and if we didn’t pull out of our site in the next few minutes, we would likely lose the CRV and potentially our RV to it! So I quickly cycled the transmission, hopped in the RV’s driver’s seat, and pulled out of the site.
In the morning, we learned of the damage: hundreds of tiny dents in all places on the CRV. Every plastic light cover on our RV was shattered, but it was otherwise unharmed. The CRV skylight, windshield, and other glass were still intact.
I called our insurance company to ensure we could file whatever claim we needed from South Dakota. Lindsay and I didn’t want to be in Nebraska anymore, and we never wanted to return to the state, for that matter.
We try to live fully, which means without regret. But both Lindsay and I regretted spending the night in Gothenburg that night. We regretted not stopping ten miles short or driving ten miles further because we would have escaped the hail storm and the damage it caused.
Driving through town, I could tell we wouldn’t be the only ones dealing with insurance. Likely, every roof and vehicle in town would be replaced, a mass casualty of midwestern proportions.
We tried to laugh. I know we cried. Then we began to doubt again whether we had made the right decision to leave Florida. The questions kept coming to mind as I drove into the grasslands of Nebraska.
How could this be God’s will for our lives? How do we know where we went wrong and how to get back into the flow?
The answer didn’t arrive in those last 350 miles of driving. But as we reached Wind Cave National Park, our neighbor just a few miles south of our seasonal home in Custer State Park, I forgot about the check engine lights and the hail storm from the night before. I forgot about the ninety-degree nights and the 2,000 miles behind us.
I thought only of how it felt to come home, driving the prairies and watching the road bend up and down, left and right, through the small hills of the southwest corner of South Dakota.
We could deal with everything that broke when we arrived. We just needed to enjoy the last few miles that twisted and turned into the beauty that attracts multitudes to this corner of the state every year.
Every mile further along was one more we knew we wouldn’t backtrack at this point. We were committed. We were close. A campsite awaited us where we had spent the previous two summer seasons. Our front door would open to a small patch of grass and a few dozen young Ponderosa Pine trees. Just beyond our site, an old dirt road awaited us to walk it every morning, keenly aware that a bison may be grazing nearby.
And then there was the lodge and the work that awaited. This was a different year, no doubt. But as we neared our home beneath the Ponderosa’s, I forgot our struggles and the doubt we drove through to get here.
All was not right in our world, and it wouldn’t be right when we arrived. But we sensed something awaited us in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
We could not have anticipated or planned what that was. But that story is for another day. For now, we trusted that we had made the right decision because we knew in our hearts that God was with us regardless of where we went. Maybe knowing that was what God wanted us to learn all along, engine lights and hail storms included.
For now, we found our temporary home on the road. Next, we’d have to confront the new reality of this life – that I was just a server in the restaurant, not a manager of the entire lodge, and that Lindsay had no full-time employment. We had burned $1,000 in gas to return to a place that offered no immediate return on that investment.
But what came next, well, it’s a lovely miracle…
Stay tuned and I’ll fill you in on that lovely miracle and how our lives have started to change in ways we never imagined!
Much love for taking the time to remain a part of our wander!
Chris & Lindsay + Everest + Huckleberry!
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