There is a certain member of our family, who shall remain nameless, who seems to get an itch about every three years to make a major life change. Well, it has been about three years since the last major change of switching careers, so everybody watch out. When at first the new change seemed to be just buying an RV because it would be more cost effective than renting for a month, it seemed like a simple change that would be easy to handle. Well, we should have known better.
We had a great trip for the month of July traveling to our beloved Madeline Island to spend time with Julie’s family, spent a couple weeks on Luke’s family’s farm in Wisconsin, and then a trip to Lake Forest, IL to celebrate Julie’s Grandfather’s legacy. Driving back to Colorado, Luke started dreaming. “I think we could do this, I think it could be awesome. Let’s sell the house and do this full-time”. I quickly responded “Um, no. That would be crazy, I can’t sell the house, we need a place to live! I can’t leave all the things at home that we love. We have an awesome family, a great church, an amazing small group of friends, the boys need a place to call home. NO! I can’t.”
Well, Luke is either very persuasive or I am a push over, or God moved in a powerful way. I will choose the third option, because I know the answer 🙂
Why? Why would anyone at this point in life do this? Shouldn’t you wait until you are retired to do that? Are you crazy, won’t you get sick of each other in such a small space? Those are all great questions and valid points, but here is what we know: We are at a unique time in life when our boys are not babies, but not in school full time yet. We want to spend as much quality time with them as possible while we can before life gets full of school and activities take over our precious family time. Building a family foundation that will help us navigate the years to come seems more important than anything. Time is precious so we better make the most of it. You might be thinking, wow, three boys stuck in an RV? Honestly, I am thinking the same thing, but I cling to the hope that I can open the door and they will have space to run and new places to explore every place we stop. The scenery always changes and the adventure is always new. Also, on the bright side they are small enough to fit comfortably in the RV and they are not eating me out of house and home yet. The RV fridge is not that big ya’ll!!
We are going into this adventure giving ourselves grace. We have no timelines, no hard dates, no schedule. We want to have the freedom to take it one day at a time. If we love it, we’ll keep going; if we hate it we’ll come home. Except that we will be home for Christmas!! I can’t miss being with family for that.
We know this will be a fun adventure, but also probably the hardest thing we have done to date as a family. However, we begin this adventure with great expectation and know that we will grow and be changed in ways that we never expected, and that God will meet us on this journey. That alone will make the journey worth it.