...with a husband and 5 sons, I am truly outnumbered....stories and thoughts on life from a mom in a houseful of little men!

Monday, April 21, 2014

Winds of Change

The breezes have been stirring in these hearts of ours for quite awhile now.  Change has been in the air, and we've been waiting...listening....for His leading. 

I'm not the most patient person in the world, and I admit that our recent season of seeming stagnancy tested what bit of that character trait I do have.  As you know, however, enduring that testing is required for growth.

  "Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,  and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us."   Romans 5:4

What I know now is, that it really is for our good to hunker down and enjoy those quiet, patience-testing times...because one never knows when they will come to an abrupt end.

There's no sense in beating around the bush.  Boyland is moving, Folks.


These last sixteen (sixteen?  really?) years in Alaska have been amazing. Yes, sixteen years ago, Tony and I, along with our two dogs and elderly kitty, left the Midwest, drove our old Chevy "Caroline" down the Al-Can, and set up house here in the Matanuska Valley.

We've grown so much since then, and in so many ways.  Alaska has been good ground for growing.  We've grown mentally and spiritually.  We've grown new, genuine, incredible friendships.  Our hearts have been enlarged with passion for new causes.  And of course, we've grown in family size.

We came to Alaska to see and do all there was to see and do.  We didn't get to see and do everything we had hoped, but we did have a huge realization that only comes from actually living here.  We realized after living here awhile, that Alaska is a very different place than what people typically romanticize it to be.  It is not any less than what many people think of it, but it is definitely different.  That "difference" is what seeps deeply into your heart, creating such a deep love for Alaska.  Most everything about Alaska we will consequently, very deeply miss.

So why pull up these roots that are so entrenched in this magnificent place?  There are several reasons, actually.  These reasons vary from health issues to career issues, to looking-ahead-to-the-future-of-our-family issues.  Like many big life decisions, the reasons behind this one are fairly complicated.  As we've wrestled with all these issues, the answer always comes into focus:

It's just....time.

After seriously contemplating this for months, we took a leap and put our house on the Market.  As with everything in this venture, I bathed the potential sale of our house with prayer.  I actually asked God plainly to just use this as a litmus test for whether this was His good and perfect plan for us or not.  You see, I don't trust myself to know the best and perfect plan for us.  And quite frankly, it's easy for Him to let it sell or not let it sell.  Our house hit the Market three weeks ago.  Since then, we had three showings, about one per week.  This past Tuesday, our real estate agent received two offers on our house.  The offers arrived to her within five minutes of each other, around 10:00 at night.  There are more details to this, that I'm not at liberty to say at this point.  But suffice it to say, we have definitely gotten the litmus test signs we asked for.  Our house sold last Thursday, exactly three weeks after hitting the Market.
Now the busyness begins.  We're packing up our fiddles and banjos and heading to Appalacia.    This is going to be an incredible adventure for our family!  After the sale of the house closes, we'll be replacing our vehicles with an RV.  That will be our new home for the next couple of months while we travel across two countries, for over 3,000 miles to our new home outside of Knoxville, Tennessee.  It's both frightening and exhilarating!  Reminds me of a similar trek two young kids made in the spring of 1998.  This time, however, we'll be doing it with 5 actual KIDS, an elderly dog, and 2 spunky kitties.  For years we have dreamed of taking such a trip.  Some dreams come true...even while others are delayed.

I hope you'll join us in the adventure.  This is the first of hopefully many posts to follow.