“Don’t laugh, but…”
Some of you have probably been wondering how we got on this road. This was the conversation that started it all.
We had just finished a busy summer of selling our home of ten years and moving into our new house. Now at the end of July, were finishing a refreshing week of Life Action Family Camp. We were looking forward to heading back to Northern Virginia to continue settling into our new place and familiar routines. This conversation changed all of that.
On the last night of camp, I walked in on a conversation between Amanda and her longtime friend, Lori Herdklotz. Lori and her husband Jimmy have been serving with Life Action for 30 years, and they’ve known Amanda since she traveled with Life Action as a teenager. Jimmy and Lori travel with Steve and Debbie Canfield on the Blue Team, the same team Amanda was a part of years ago.
Earlier that week, after catching up with old friends and feeling a bit nostalgic, Amanda had said to me, “Wouldn’t it be great to travel with a Life Action team?” I immediately laughed and said, “No.” God definitely has a sense of humor.
When I walked up to Amanda and Lori, she said, “Oh good, I’ve got you both here.” I don’t know how, but I knew what was coming next.
“Don’t laugh, but Steve and Debbie wanted me to ask if you’d be interested in traveling with one of our teams.”
Based on our finely tuned sense of each other’s feelings, Amanda immediately replied, “Yes!”
My initial response was more measured. “We’ll pray about it.” And though that can often be a cop out, I sincerely intended to pray about it. After all, these kinds of things don’t happen by accident.
The next day, all along our ten hour drive from Michigan to Virginia, we prayed and talked about the opportunity. We also got on the phone with Shane Black, the leader of the Silver Team, and got some more details on what the position entailed. Over the next few days, Amanda and I talked about a number of things: what it would look like to leave our new home to live in a trailer most of the year; how we felt about leaving my dependable job to live off of missionary support; what it would mean for Amanda to leave behind her leadership positions in Classical Conversations to school the kids on the road on her own. We also talked about what it would be like to be in full-time vocational ministry, to teach the Bible regularly, to travel the country, to work alongside a team of passionate young adults…
And so on Tuesday, I called Shane and told him we had decided NOT to travel with them. There was just too much going on right now. We were in the middle of too many changes to upend our lives to travel the country year round. Shane was completely understanding and we agreed that maybe we could talk again if an opportunity like this came up again.
I hung up, and I immediately felt a burden of loss unlike anything I’ve felt before.
The Lee Family 
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