The Stories We Believe

The stories we believe define us. Narrative arcs permeate our lives in the form of never ending circles. Why do we “become like our parents?” Or why does “history repeat itself?”

I believe everything comes full circle…which means a lot of life’s wisdom is the ability to perceive patterns.

There is something about GETTING OUT OF YOUR ENVIRONMENT that exposes your patterns.

It didn’t even take two days of being out of our house and on the road to notice certain things about ourselves. For instance, why do I feel a hum of stress like background noise at specific moments of the day?

My thoughts have felt more linear for some reason, or maybe easier to hear. After moving out of our house on Thursday, we took a few days in northern Minnesota on some family land to recover from the two week sprint of a move. It’s pretty quiet up here.

Quiet enough to hear ourselves….and I mean, HEAR ourselves. It’s scary how dull of hearing I was to my own voice.

“Maybe I’m worth it…”

I heard myself think that today while we were editing social media content.

What?

I caught myself thinking that. Imagine, if that thought goes unchecked. If my life moved so fast that I just chose to avoid it.

What kind of storylines run through our head on a daily basis, that turn into a vortex spiraling into an internalized belief about themselves?

Which in turn, become cycles…

Which means I’ve probably said, “I hope I’m worth it” before….

I had to be removed from my environment and put in a quiet one in order to see a pattern for what it is.

CHAPTER 1 - PAGE 1

“Everything before was exposition. Filling the hero of the story with background and tools. The life before had happened to me as childhood happens to everyone. The mark of adulthood is when we happen to life.”

-Jedidiah Jenkins

If the mark of adulthood is when we happen to life, how many adults really are there in the world….

I’m Jamey Hammond, one-third of the crew aboard Eden the Airstream. We are about three weeks away from embarking on a one year journey around the United States.

Our final days spent in our suburban home, will be filled with a garage sale, lots of moving boxes and a multitude of emotions.

The past two years have been like a whirlwind. Personal Deaths, Chaos, Pandemic, George Floyd, parents divorce, Quitting our jobs. I’ll go deep into these things in future articles, I promise.

Leading a church community through these things added another layer of pressure.

So how did we ever end up deciding we wanted to live in a trailer?

We fell off the deep end.

Kidding, but it was close to that a few times. (We came out of that time with some crazy stories, that I’ll go into eventually.)

Actually if I’m complete honest, I can’t explain how we got here. This was never in our 1-5 year plan.

It sort of happened to us?

Which according to Jedidiah Jenkins, is the mark of someone who has not yet become an adult.

Maybe Eden is our Barmitzvah….

For the first time in my life, I am open to an adventure. That word always seemed cheesy to me, being that I only heard a certain kind of person use it. It sounded so fluffy, like a bumper sticker you put on the back of your Subaru (no ill will against subarus.)

But it feels real to me now, because I am open to discover. In order to be open to discover, you must release your fear of the unknown. (Which is much easier said than done, especially when you grew up with a “black and white” attitude towards life.)

Whatever this journey ends up being, we are open to letting it be. We know our direction, but the destination is unknown.

This is the first time in my life, that I am ok with that.

Into the unknown we go.

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If you’re reading this in real time, be checking our socials for more details about the garage sale and more videos coming soon to our YouTube channel before we set sail.

We are eternally grateful for everyone who has supported us, and we can’t thank you enough for your love.