What Does It Take?

My dad said it was a sun­set cruise so nat­u­rally to me that meant romance. And romance means a sexy black dress with match­ing ear­rings and cute hair. It was seri­ously the first time I had done my hair the entire week and that, at the end of the day, proved to be absolutely point­less. We started board­ing the boat about two hours before the sun would set. As every­one slowly started arriv­ing, I sat in the back of the boat won­der­ing if there was any­way I could get Vitaliy to fan me until this boat was going to move. Even if I could just get him to blow on me, it would have pro­duced more wind than I was receiv­ing on that scorch­ing hot and humid Florida evening. It only took about 15 min­utes into the wait­ing that I had my hair in a pony­tail and my skin felt like I had dipped myself in a pool of syrup — I was that wet and sticky!

Even­tu­ally, all the guests showed up and Cap­tain Jim sig­naled for us to take our seats as he sailed us out to sea. We cruised through the bay as Cap­tain Jim shared a brief his­tory about dif­fer­ent restau­rants and fish­ing con­tests. We later braved the choppy waters and made our way over to watch for dol­phins. We even were spoiled with a short air show that got every­one out of their seats hoot­ing and hol­ler­ing in delight. With all the beauty sur­round­ing me, my momen­tary dis­com­fort dis­si­pated like the sun across the hori­zon. My visual senses were on over­load. There were so many moments for me to cher­ish as I think back to the boat ride. And yet, there is one that stands out more than any pic­ture my mind could recover.

Cap­tain Jim was telling us sto­ries about the boats on the bay. He pointed to one and said he knew the fam­ily who lived on that boat. There was a rus­tle of noise on the boat; it seemed every­one was a bit sur­prised to hear how an entire fam­ily could live on a boat sep­a­rated from every­thing by water.  He went on to share the details about how the father of the fam­ily was diag­nosed with can­cer a few years back. He and his fam­ily decided to sell every­thing and buy the boat to live on. The kids are home schooled so they are able to travel around. My heart jumped with excite­ment because I love adven­tures and hope I’m never too scared to take adven­tures with my fam­ily. But I imme­di­ately asked myself, what will it take for Vitaliy and I to actu­ally fol­low through with the dreams that we have for our fam­ily? Will it take some­one get­ting can­cer for us to live adven­tur­ously? I needed to hear this story to really chal­lenge myself and my think­ing. I don’t want to wait for a life threat­en­ing sit­u­a­tion to live out my dreams; I want to live out my dreams before life itself threat­ens to end them.

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