The Adventures of Travel (Episode 74)

Brent and Janis talk about the benefits and joy they have experienced over the years in their travels around the world. How it has been a blessing to their marriage and how it has expanded their recognition of the wonder of the uniqueness and yet sameness of the people they have encountered.

Transcript:

Welcome to Life and Love Nuggets, where licensed therapist Brent and Janice Sharpe share how you can thrive in your life, your love, and your relationships.

Hello friends, welcome back to Life and Love Nuggets. We just got back from a fun adventure. Yes we did. We spent a week in Ireland. And people often say, and why do you do that? And they're like, do you have marriage seminars you're doing there?

No, we'd be willing to, if anybody wants to bring us. But we do it for fun. We travel for fun. Yeah, and so we were, gosh, the little roads, we were on the west coast of Ireland, and called the Wild Atlantic Way. And, oh my gosh, it's pretty wild. The roads, just as you move farther and farther out towards the sea, the roads get smaller and smaller and smaller. And of course, we're driving on a different side of the road than we're used to.

Kind of a fun adventure. It was. We kind of enjoyed it. I thought the driving was a little, though I didn't drive, you drove, but I thought it was a little better than Scotland. Because in Scotland, and in parts of England, there were so many stone walls on both sides of these little tiny roads. And these had hedges. But it just felt a lot better to have a little bit of leaves scratching the side of your car than the idea of, we're going to get the whole side taken off. Yeah. Yeah, so going down, and again, the roads supposedly, you can still get two cars passing each other. Yes. But then you kind of put a bus, a tour bus, or a truck or something, it's like, what?

How in the world are we supposed to get past each other? And you pull over as far as you can and go, inhale. Yeah. But as we got further, I had less. Yes, you did awesome. Less stressors, and it just got more natural. And I always say, as long as you can really just pay attention.

If you're paying attention, it'll all go well. There's mostly roundabouts, as long as you figure out how to do the roundabouts. And it's always when something happens that you're not ready for. And it goes back to natural muscle memory of driving a car in America for over 50 years. And that's when we get in trouble. But we had a wonderful time. We did.

And so it prompted me to go, I think we need to do a podcast on travel. Why we do it. The adventure.

Specifically you, because you. Specifically me. Specifically you. Well, a couple things, because we have some friends that don't like to travel together as a couple. I mean, some, the guys go on golf weekends and the girls go on shopping weekends, or we know some friends that all the women go to Europe together and the husbands want to stay home. And I went to Europe when I was in high school. And so I kind of got a taste for it.

And then when I got married, as you hear in an earlier podcast, you freaked out, not freaked out. You were startled that I would think about going to Europe as a couple. And so it wasn't something you experienced. And yet we travel really well together. And you really like it. I do. And you didn't have to talk me into it.

It's just something I wouldn't have thought about. You know, my family didn't do that. And I mean, we maybe took a vacation here or there to Florida for a week or something, you know. But as far as the kind of adventures that we've gone on, it just wasn't something I was used to. But I remember, I think it was on our ninth anniversary, was our first trip to Paris and France and a little bit of Italy. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. And so we've just gone all over the world and enjoyed it.

And it's been, we've learned some stuff from it. And so we thought we'd just chat a minute about what kind of we learned about ourselves, about our relationship, about other people in these regions of the world that we've traveled to and see where this leads us. I think one of the things that I've traveled, I would get antsy. It would be like, ah, when are we going to get this over with? Or, you know, I would get really restless on international flights. Or if something wasn't going our way, I would get a little restless. I think with age, I hope wisdom and maturity, I've kind of gotten to the point where it is what it is.

And I've learned to relax in wherever I'm at and to not be as stressed over how much time something takes. Yeah. I think that's been one of the keys is rather than, we've got to see everything. We've got to have every experience. We've purposely just said, you know, let's just, well, the first time we went, we had no plans. This was before cell phones. We were young and a little crazy.

This was before internet or cell phones. And we had a book that we, and we rented a car and drove through France because why not travel Europe on $25 a day or something like that. And fortunately you knew a little bit about the language. You'd studied French and I knew nothing. And we knew we were in trouble when we were in England. We flew into London. And of course we had, we were going to the South of France.

And we had these lightweight clothes and we got to the London airport and it was freezing and everybody had dark clothes on and jackets. We looked out the window of the plane and people were in parkas and we're like, great. We brought all cotton, white shirts, white pants and all this kind of stuff. We learned, we all learned from that to check the weather wherever you're going. Yeah. Yeah. So I remember walking through the streets of London and we were asking somebody for directions and they had such a strong, it was kind of a cockney accent.

I remember they said all of this stuff and I turned to you and go, huh? And I had to interpret. And then I thought, oh my gosh, I'm interpreting in England. We're going to be in real trouble here.

We go to France. But I do think that that leads us to a point that I think we learn to trust each other's that type of thing. But I trust you for driving. You're very competent as a driver. And so I think it's learning to trust that, that I think that's made it much easier for us to travel together. Yeah. I think we just, we got comfortable with just going, okay, this is a great adventure.

And we didn't know, because this was, oh my gosh, 35 years ago, more than that. We first went to France and we didn't know how people were going to accept this or relate to us. And I remember at times going up to a train station or a bus station and asking how much it was. And they said something and I had no idea what they said. And so I just had a bunch of money in my hand and I just held it out to them. We don't really recommend that. Can you take what is necessary?

But it was also realizing that these are just people. They're all just same kind of people trying to find their way in life and trying to live as individuals, their highest life as relationships. And, and there's just, we found in all of our travels, there's good throughout the whole world. You can find good throughout the whole world. And, and you know, there's, yes, we see in the highlights on, on all the social feeds and stuff now, all the bad things that can happen. You know, I remember this last time we were in France just a few months ago and we were going to an event at the Eiffel tower. And, and our kids had heard that there had been some kind of a stabbing.

There was a stabbing right at the base of the Eiffel tower that day. And they were all concerned about that. They were. Yeah. And make sure you don't go to the Eiffel tower. He said, we just won't tell them until we're done, which I'm sure they did with us when they were growing up. We just won't tell mom and dad.

But again, that's what we hear about. So we think Paris is, is dangerous and scary and nobody there was saying a word about it, you know, and it was very comfortable and peaceful. And again, a lot of good people. Um, and it's interesting to see how other people live. I mean, just the differences that so much is alike now because yeah, um, we're all kind of, but it kind of looks alike. Yeah. And there's gap everywhere you go.

Um, gap McDonald's, I mean, those kinds of things everywhere you go, but it all, it is interesting to see the kind of houses people live in, the kind of cars they drive. I mean, the fact that they drive on roads here as two way, that's just a part of their life or being a sheep farmer. It's so different than how we live, but it's, it's good to just see all of the different things that are going on in the world and all the different people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I remember it's kind of surprising to me now that we didn't, the very first trip that we took, um, that we didn't just before kind of backpacks and you're going to scare people about going to Paris sprint.

You just said we felt safe 35 years ago. And so this no longer happens. So again, we had no plans. We didn't know where we're going to stay in Paris and we had all these suitcases. I mean, this was before wheels on suitcases. Okay. If people can imagine.

And, uh, so we had certainly looked like American tourists. I was lugging all this stuff around. We were going to be there for Calais, which is just on the French side of the English channel. Again, there was no channel. Right. And it was for cell phone. So we had to figure out how to use a pay phone, which at that point they were different.

So you figured out, you made the call, you got reservations for us at this hotel and we simply knew we were supposed to get off at this train, train stop. Okay. But it never Metro stop. And again, didn't have any clue how the Metro worked. And, uh, um, again, just not knowing, you know, a lot of it was just unknowing going into this huge city for the first time, didn't know what we're doing. The trains train took a lot longer than we thought it was going to at that time. And as we were kind of planning out, we got in there like at 10 o'clock at night and here we are American tourists carrying all this stuff in down into the subway.

In our white cotton clothes, and all of a sudden, um, we're in the subway stop and there are two gangs. Now we've been Paris a lot since then. And we've never seen, never seen the subway much anymore. Doesn't happen in Ubers. Um, the, uh, um, and there were two rival gangs. We think are gangs dressed up in American baseball uniforms, all carrying baseball bats on the opposite sides of the tracks, yelling at each other. And we're standing there like frozen thinking we're going to die.

Here we are American tourists. We're right here in the middle of it.

Oh my gosh. And we're just, fortunately the subway came through pretty quickly. We hopped on everything, everything dissipated. Um, and we got to our stop, figured it out, got off and got up to the, the ground level, um, the street level. And I mean, it gets 1030 at night and it stayed light there till like 10 o'clock and, and all these families with little kids just running around, going to dinner and stuff. And we're like, it was so peaceful. Okay. It must be safe.

Stay above ground as much as possible. Yeah. Um, but we kept going and, and, uh, took trains and buses and cars, rented a car, went all the way through France. Um, anyway, so over the, over the years, again, we've had many of these experiences in all different kinds of countries throughout the world. And, and, um, um, so found just roll with it. If we have plans and it doesn't work out today, then just not to be, you know, and we'll do that maybe the next time we come or we won't. And nobody dies from not being able to see the garden that Monet planted or painted certain flowers in, you know?

So it's just okay. We did have an experience this time, which could have been disappointing, but I figured maybe it was just the grace of God protecting us. Um, or me specifically, we had the opportunity to, and we booked tickets for going out eight miles off the coast, I think of, um, Ireland onto a Island called Skellig Michael. And it's a huge rock that in the fifth century, 12 monks came over and they built a monastery there. Well, not actually a monastery. They built hives, basically round stoned, stone huts, um, that were in a star Wars movie return of the film there. And, um, you go 612 steps, old stone steps that the monks had built over the centuries to go to the top.

There was nothing there. There was no food, no toilets, no water. Um, and it was several hours long. And so we had booked tickets cause it was like a bucket list thing for us. So we went and found out that the weather was too bad. The winds were too high. Yeah. They have a hard, I mean, it's not like there's this big dock there. Okay. And so it basically pull up to a little platform and the water can't be too choppy.

Uh, or people can't get actually onto the Island. And, and so depending on the level of the waves and the wind and so forth, they go or they don't go, you know? And so we were, we had two options, two days that we were there. We were on actually the third, we could have gone to and it just so happened that it got canceled every day. And, and, uh, so we went and looked at cliffs and we had fun, all kinds of stuff, you know? And so, and we knew ahead of time that they, not many people get to go when they don't allow many people on the Island because it's a world heritage site. And so they don't want it to be crumbling away.

Um, but two that the weather was like that. And so a lot of times people don't get to go. And so they told us ahead of time, don't, don't get your hopes up that you will get to go. Um, but I was really pleased and maybe it's because we watched the safety film ahead of time. They had us watch the safety film because we're going to have to sign releases. Um, and so I, I think maybe that helped me deal with the disappointment because I, I had a little bit of, am I going to take my life in my hands doing this? Some people have watched the safety film and canceled, but we were determined to go.

But I think the growth that I saw in me, at least, um, which you had all along, but was the idea of, okay, I really had my hopes up. We came to this part of the country just to do this, but that's okay. There's other things we can do and we can enjoy where we're at. And so we had a wonderful time hiking and hiking to the highest points of mountain. I did fall in a gorse bush at one point and got some prickly hands, but, um, but just learning that it's okay, however it turns out. And I think that's a life lesson of things aren't always going to turn out the way that we want them to, but we enjoy where we're at. We enjoy what's right here. Yeah. And one of the things we found also is that is our faith.

We found different ways that our faith is being expressed throughout the world. That is pretty amazing. You know, um, of course, in, in Europe, we've been to lots of different places in the Europe, uh, the cathedrals and the places of faith, even though, you know, not all the cathedrals are full, you know, these days, um, people don't go out of obligation anymore. And people are, um, going through lots of questions in their faith and so forth throughout the world. Uh, but we've just found these expressions. Um, I remember in Barcelona, the, I'm trying to remember the name of the cathedral. Anyway, it's, it's, it's been being built. I want to say Familia Sagrada. Something like, yeah. Yeah. That's it. It's perfect. Perfect. Yes. Um, it's still being built these towers.

Um, but to see the inspiration of the builder and the architect and, and just what people feel when they go into this building. Um, the architect specifically made sure that the spires on the cathedral are lower than the natural mountains around them, that they would not, that God's architecture would always be higher than there. I just thought things like that were very inspirational. Um, and so we've seen a lot of those kinds of things. And then we've seen, you know, we've talked about, um, uh, spiritual pilgrimage. We went to Iona, Scotland, uh, very simple, um, little Abbey there that is fascinating because there's, it's so rainy there that the rock walls actually have like little, little, um, ferns, ferns growing on the inside of the building up high. Bryn did not get up and pull them out.

He left them there. I couldn't have it way, you know, in this little Abbey. Um, and to a little, um, well, St. Bridget's well, St. Bridget's well that we, that we found on, um, one of our last days in Ireland where people for centuries have come and prayed and lit candles for friends and family. And as we walked into, it's, it's just a, it's a little cave. Um, but I don't, it was, it was powerful just walking into the place.

And the fact that, you know, we're not like super, we're, we're certainly not superstitious people, but we're, I don't know that we're people that are naturally caught up in the emotion of experiences. Um, but just walking in there and seeing, I don't know, just, I don't know. Knowing the prayers of people, so many people had come here for thousands, not thousands, hundreds and hundreds of years, um, to pray and to really put like they would often put some kind of a piece of jewelry or, uh, they tie a rag around a certain picture or a picture. Yes. Yes. And I, I think, um, one of the pictures that I saw was Zelinsky and we met so many new Ukrainians that were working in Ireland and I just suddenly teared up and started crying about people. I'll do it now if you want about all of the people that are praying for him in the midst of the battle.

Um, and in Ireland they had everybody that we seem to encounter were proud of the fact that they had opened their country up to Ukrainians and many of them, they even had, have had hotels or apartment buildings that haven't been fully booked that they've opened them up to. And, um, we, we, we encountered many people working in some of the cafeterias, certain cafeterias, some of the, the cafes and so forth that were Ukrainians and, and just the embrace of one people to another, the hospitality of it was a beautiful thing, you know, particularly with kind of what happens in our country with immigration and not going to go into all that, but, but just the, the open heartedness of God, you know, is what we felt. Um, and the, um, and even in most of these cultures, the, even though we've been in Barcelona and Paris and Johannesburg and, you know, London and all, you know, major cities. Um, but even in those, uh, we encountered so many people that live, I would say a little more simplistic life. Now they have all the technology and everything that we do. Um, but they don't seem to be quite as caught up with that as much as we are. You know, they seem to appreciate just the day to day life and, you know, going to get a coffee at this place.

And I don't know, there's something about that that was inspiring, you know, to us. I'm going to circle back to Bridget. Well, there's like 15 Bridget's Wells in Ireland. This is the one we went to, that we stumbled upon really from the person in the coffee shop told us about it. And it's the most famous one. But what I think we sense there is what Tracy Balzer talks about in her book on thin places, where it's this idea that there are places where, you know, the saints have gone before us or people have gone before us and prayed for centuries. And there just seems to be more of a connection with God.

You can't explain it, but there's just that sense of it being a really Holy place or a place where God is near. Yeah. That distance between heaven and earth, you know, which won't go into all that theology of what heaven is necessary, but not necessarily. It's just God's places in the world. And it's in that the distance between him and us is, is thinner, you know, kind of collapses. It's what we see at even some of the ideas of the sacraments, you know, where the distance between heaven and earth collapses, God comes to earth in a unique way in a new place. And so there's some places around the world that have had people go to and pray and with a common heart towards our dependency on God, a common heart towards allowing God to love us so that we can love the world that a boy just walking into this little cave in just the few moments that we spent there, you know, uh, was pretty overwhelming.

It really was. You felt it, you know, and, uh, and we're going to be having Tracy in one of our future episodes. We're going to have her, um, come on and just talk about thin places and specifically about the pilgrimages that she takes people to Iona. And we could spend many podcasts talking about Iona. But what I would say, kind of referring back to our last podcast, talk about a place where you can be still and feel the presence of God and really get in tune to you. I mean, we both said we felt like after we were there a couple of years ago, we were recalibrated. I mean, it really did change our lives.

So I'm looking forward to having Tracy here to talk about some of that. So we didn't know where we're going to go today. So we're, so we rambled, so let's talk a little bit again, just about the idea of adventures. Um, now for some people, adventures are, is camping in, in the States. You know, we've kind of been talking about, we kind of enjoy traveling throughout the islands and the Caribbean and South America. And well, most of the time when we're out of the country, people don't get ahold of us. And so for years, I always said that Brent couldn't really relax unless we left the country.

You're getting better at that than me. But, um, yeah, but there's adventures around every corner. It's what we look at as adventures and whether it's the gathering place in Tulsa camping. Yeah. And so I've had, it's been fascinating to me to see, um, the impact of time away of taking breaks, um, getting away and changing the normal course of our busy lives of how that affects people. Um, doing marriage counseling for years, you know, most couples, now some couples have disaster vacations and they should have skipped it, but a higher percentage, even if they're troubled in their marriage, they go away for a week. Uh, they come back more connected, you know, cause it is, we actually have time together.

Now we're doing something together that is enjoyable. That's, that's enriching and life giving for us. And, and, um, and there was a study done also about the benefits that we get from these times away that it's not just the time away that you add all of the preparation time leading up to it. We've been planning our own trip for months and months. And so we've been looking at these different things we wanted to see these places that we wanted to stay. And, and so we were actually experiencing that, you know, together. Then we had the experience and then afterwards, here we are on a podcast.

Not everybody does on a podcast, but we're recounting those memories, you know, and just, even on our flight home, you know, we had conversations about, well, I remember this, no, I enjoyed this so much. And it wasn't that cool, you know? Um, and, um, and so you get, boy, this, this much more expanded benefits from these experiences than just the few days away, you know? And so if, if, if for some couple it's weekend camping trips, you know, tent camping or. Well Gary Smalley used to always say that camping was one of the best things for families. We tried it once. It's not really my thing.

So Janice's definition of camping is some place that's farther than a mile away from. No farther than a mile away from good espresso. Well camping is it's over a mile away from good espresso and it's a place that doesn't have robes.

Yeah, pretty much. Sorry. Sorry. He has to love me anyway. But we just have all different kinds of, everybody has different kind of experience. This is the point. And we're just talking about ours, but everybody's is going to be.

And I think it's looking for adventures everywhere. I mean, even in Tulsa when our daughter moved back, one of the things she'd been in Detroit, one of the things she said is she was going to look at Tulsa like it was a new city and she was going to find all of the interesting things here. Or I have couples that will drive to little towns in Oklahoma to just see what's there. Just spend the day driving there and back. But there's adventures all around us and those are the things that get us out of the mundane, that get us into connecting with one another more, but also being refreshed and renewed. Yeah. And so, so whatever this means to you, we're hopefully that word adventure can be something that we can grab ahold of and, and we're going to have to do this purposely in life or work will just take over and we will just be worker bees.

And so, and we have to make a financial plan for it. Yes. So many times we would say we could drive a lot nicer cars if we didn't do this kind of trip over the years. Or gosh, if we didn't go to France, we could have had new living room furniture, but it's just not that important. And we have chosen to stick with the budget and keep it pretty modest in how we travel. And so it is, it's creating kind of a memory book for us as a couple. And now again, individuals, this can be the same for them.

We're kind of developing a memory book. I remember, you know, we're old enough that, that we would have, we remember the days where we would have in our family, we would have family reunions and every sometime during that family reunion, we would, somebody would get out there, a little slide projector or a cell of slides and everybody would sit and watch the slides. And they were pretty much the, mostly the same slides though. But we would see this like once a year or once every other year, everybody would sit there and they would comment about, Oh, that's that place. Remember we all went to this place and Oh, that's grandma so-and-so and that's cousin so-and-so that now is over here. And, and so it was developing kind of a, you know, that connected us to that family. It created this sense of this is us, this is kind of who we are.

Now we've got iPhones and take these amazing pictures, you know? But as we scroll back through those now, this is us, this is who we are as a couple. This is who we are as individuals is, these are experiences that we've had that bond us, that connect us, that are brought a lot of joy and life, you know, to us. And so I think there's something pretty special about the memories of all of that, that it creates. So, so thank you for being willing to be spontaneous. Well, thank you for being the way that you are. And that's been inspired us as a couple to take these adventures.

Um, cause I, I'm pretty much, we're about the same now, thinking about the next one, you know, and, and enjoying these moments. And so, um, and thank you for those of you that are listening for being willing to let us ramble on putting up with our stories about this. And hopefully there's something maybe you can grab ahold of and that, uh, you can connect with. So for today, uh, go in peace, blessings as you go.

The Life and Love Nuggets podcast is a 501c3 nonprofit and is supported by gifts from people like you to donate, go to life and love nuggets.com/donate. This podcast is produced by Clayton created in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The content should not be considered or used for counseling, but for educational purposes only.