Looking back on our life to early 2011 it's almost painful to remember how different it was. Up until that time, we were completely caught up in the rat race. We owned a huge house in a beautiful, suburban neighborhood with a gorgeous pool and a bunch of cars, including my husband's dream Porsche.
I shopped at Nordstrom and had clothes in my closet with tags on them that I never wore. Our kids had everything they could possibly need or want. And yet, it was never enough. That's how society taught us to live. I remember Eric's former boss telling him to buy more things - big things - because he wanted him in debt so that he would continue to be a motivated worker.
But our kids were in a private, Christian school where I was the Home & School Leader (think PTA) and we attended church. Wasn't that good enough? Weren't we living the American dream?
Nope.
It wasn't until I became part of a women's group at our church/school that my mindset began to change. I developed a deeper relationship with Christ than I ever had and I started to see things differently. I began to have very different desires in my heart. Things started changing in my personal life - I no longer had the desire for certain things and so I let them go.
Eric and I started to talk about our future in a much different way. We realized that this was not the way we wanted our kids to grow up. We could already see the entitlement issues in them. They had no appreciation for everything that they had, even after several trips to Thailand where they had seen a much different way of life.
In July of 2011 we started talking about selling our house. We were seriously considering relocating to Thailand to do some sort of missionary work. Neither of us had any skills that typical missionaries have, but we knew of a family that had done a similar thing and just jumped in with both feet and were being quite helpful. We figured we could go help them!
After thinking long and hard about moving away from all of our family, we decided to let that part of our dream go for a while. My mother-in-law was battling cancer at the time and it just didn't feel right leaving. We were still unclear about what our next move would be, however.
In December of 2011 we put our house on the market. It was an ugly time to be selling a house! We put complete faith in God. He knew our desire to shift our hearts and we knew He would bless us.
By this time I was starting to feel out-of-place in a school that I thought should be everything we wanted and so I made the decision to pull my boys out and begin homeschooling them. This was something we had planned on doing when we planned on having children, but it just never fit in quite right with the life we were living.
Knowing that our house was on the market and not knowing when it might sell, we decided it would be best to start homeschooling right after the holiday break so that we could get into the groove while I still had access to a teacher I adored who was willing to help me.
Towards the end of January, 2012, we visited my in-laws and our property in West Virginia and got the bug for country living! It seemed a whole new plan was to unfold.
In February, less than 3 months after we put our house on the market, we had an offer! Soon after, our house was
under contract! Not having a firm plan in place for our next big move, we decided to rent an apartment for a year to get things figured out.
Let me just tell you a little something about living in a house that was over 6800 square feet during a time when we were buying anything and everything our hearts desired! We had accumulated a LOT of stuff!! And we were moving to an apartment that was just 1300 square feet.
I can honestly say we made a valiant effort to pare down our belongings. We sold things, we gave things away, we donated to Goodwill. Lots. And yet, when moving day came, we still had more stuff than we knew what to do with.
We moved to our apartment. And to our two rented garages. And to our five storage units.
Sigh.
Life in the apartment was oddly good! We enjoyed having so much less space. And that year flew!
In early November I took all 4 kids and my mother and went to Thailand for three months! What an experience for the kids! Eric was able to visit us for a few weeks around the holidays. My best friend and my mother-in-law also visited!
Coming back from Thailand in late January meant that our lease was going to be up in just a few short months! We still didn't have a plan for exactly what we were going to do on our property in WV, so we decided to start looking for a rental there.
By March of 2013 we were moving into our WV rental. All of our storage units moved with us and completely filled our oversized 2-car garage! This picture is part-way through filling it - and that was just of stuff that we didn't actually need to live! We'd lived without it for a year already.
Sometime during that year I was led to a book by Joshua Becker called
Clutterfree with Kids: Change your thinking. Discover new habits. Free your home. It was life changing for me! It literally changed the way I thought about stuff. I was finally able to really purge.
Plans were under way to get our building spot ready. We had a perc test and got a septic permit. Our property surrounded my in-laws' house and we were excited to get started!
And then things started to look worse for my mother-in-law. :( By May she had decided to discontinue all of her treatments. We knew in our hearts this was the beginning of the end.
Besides being heart-wrenching news for our family, it was also game-changing for our house plans. My father-in-law would be left in a house that was really too big for two people, let alone one. And if he were to have to sell it down the road, that would mean there would be strangers in the middle of our property. Not good.
So we decided to buy their house in August. In October, my mother-in-law passed away.
We started building a new home for my father-in-law. When our lease on our rental ran out in April, he left on a motorcycle trip across the country and we moved into his house.
We love our home. It is a log home built by Eric's father and grandfather which makes it all the more meaningful. The flower gardens out front will be a forever reminder of the hands that so lovingly planted them.
Our house is bigger than what we had intended to build. And we are still working on getting rid of things. But we are definitely living with much less stuff now and it is such a breath of fresh air! I highly recommend it!
We can't wait to see what God has in store for our future!
