Hello from Florida!! No, not another vacation! We haven’t posted in over a month because we were busy packing, selling a house, and moving!
From September 2 to October 27 all things fell perfectly into place for us to make our move to Florida.
This quick life change was met with a lot of blank stares and questioning eyes, many people asked us why? We had good jobs, a beautiful home we bought brand new, amazing friends, and after all we lived in Colorado, so why on earth would we move?
It is hard to explain in a short conversation or a blog post, but I want to share a little of our story, maybe it will inspire you, it is our hope that it will. We all have changes in life we want to make; some are big some are small, but often change is seen as hard and scary. I challenge you to think differently for the next few minutes while you read this – What if change is easy? What if it is and adventure? What if it is totally needed to take us to the next level in our life?
First, I think it is necessary to understand our background, our way of thinking, who we are. We grew up in rural Iowa and a big trip constituted shopping in a city about 30 minutes away. When we went to college we stayed within an hour of our home town, then married, bought a home, and had a few of our children. But something was always missing and there was a longing in us both. Interestingly we had both dreamed of CO life before we ever knew each other, so when the opportunity arose about 5 years into our marriage, we jumped at it. We were scared out of our minds, but somehow we pushed through the fear, not well and with very little grace, but we did. We moved once while living in CO and started over again in our new town, but after about 6 years there that deep desire to move came over us again but it took another two years for things to fall in place and many things happened in those two years that contributed to us being able to make the biggest move yet, and this time with a 16, 13, and 9 year old in tow. We know that not everyone understands or feels the way we do, but I found another blog post that summed it up so perfectly and I highly recommend taking a few moments to read it, especially if you are someone who is more content being settled (which is OK) and doesn’t understand why we would pick up our family and move across the country, you can read it here http://elitedaily.com/life/staying-settling-need-move-5-times-life/751829/ My favorite quote from this article “You must resist the confines of comfort. You must defy the idea of settled. You must never resign yourself to the ordinary or the easy. You must challenge tranquility for the promise of something greater.”
With that, I’ll start this story of our journey about two years ago, when we had just been through the roughest patch of our life to date and it was a test of our marriage, our faith, our family, and our ability to endure. About that same time I was introduced to the company I work with now, Arbonne International, and was soon surrounded by a great number of positive and influential women (the previous CEO used to refer to our company as a “Personal Growth and Development company disguised as a Health and Wellness Company’). One woman in particular who earned a position of trust in my life, began to speak many truths to me, and challenge my thought processes in ways I didn’t even know existed! When I would take these thoughts home, they were often met with resistance and excuse.
The biggest thought that needed to be challenged in our heads in order to even begin our Journey to Live Life More was scarcity vs. abundance. Now I had heard these words before, but never in terms of attitude. With closer examination it became clearer that a majority of the time we as a couple and as individuals made our choices with an underlying fear in us, an expectation for lack, and a general down trodden view of the world. Worse, we were passing this along to our kids. However, we have recently been criticized for believing the world is all rainbows and butterflies (quite the change) and I say better to choose hope and life than fear and death. Don’t misunderstand, we are still well aware that things will sometimes go not as planned, that life will, at times deal you a hand you wish you could fold on, but we also now realize so much of the outcome is based on our own attitude and choice. Boy have we had some personal growth in the last few years and we are forever grateful for my friend and Arbonne for the part they have played in that. We feel we can say without a doubt we would never have been able to even begin to put our heads around the HOW to make a move like this happen if it hadn’t have been for this massive change in our thinking,( I will expand on this in a future blog post).
Then, last spring something happened, the sort of unexpected information that takes you a few minutes to process, a family who we met in the years of our oldest son playing competitive baseball on a traveling team was effected by a great loss. If you haven’t experienced this sort of youth sports phenomenon let me take a moment to explain. Our son and their son entered onto a competitive team at 8 years old where we were told at the very first meeting that those in the room with us would become our family. We spent evenings and nearly every weekend with these families on our team for about 9 months out of the year for about 5 years. We traveled out of state together, stayed in hotels together, ate meals together, laughed, cried, even fought some times, but like family we stuck together. We trusted our kids to each other and we had each other’s backs. One family in particular, the Harris family became our closest friends on the team. Our kids hit it off and had sleep overs and birthday bashes, and at games you would see us and the Harris parents cheering from the stands together. Our kids, now high school age and no longer playing on the same team, meant that some distance had spanned with our families, but not for any reason other than business of life I suppose and lack of intention, we still considered them dear friends. So when we found out that Mike Harris (the father of the boy who played with our son) was fighting for his life in ICU after a horrible case of pneumonia, we were in shock. We went to visit Mike in the hospital in the last few days of his life, it was one of those profound moments you will never forget and for us was literally life changing. Mike had suffered severe brain damage and was said to be already gone when we visited, and for the most part this seemed true as he lay lifeless and hooked to so many machines, but one moment passed as we held his hands where something came into his eyes and he looked at each of us individually. The look spoke a thousand words, it was as if he was longing to let us know he saw us and as if he was seeing straight to our souls and urging us to not take another minute for granted, to not live desperate lives, to go and do the things our hearts were desiring. After Mike passed we attended his memorial which was unique and beautiful, people enjoyed food and drink together and took turns sharing their memories of Mike. It was amazing to hear the stories of how many lives one man could effect and in so many different places and ways. It was then that we knew that it was time to start pursing our dreams and live life more. We only get one life and we were faced with a decision, how were we going to live it? Would we choose to live with what if’s and regrets, or with curiosity, adventure, and hope?
Within weeks of Mike’s death we choose for Adam to make a job change to be together more as a family, we planned a 3 day whirlwind trip to check out one of possible move destinations, and we began this very blog. We choose to live with abundant thinking, not making excuses for all the reasons it wouldn’t work, but believing and wondering how it was going to work out. From our trip of discovery to Florida we found a town that just felt right, then we came home and prepared to sell our home, we listed it and it sold in under 24 hours, my job decided I could continue my work with them from FL while Adam pursued one builder he felt a draw to and low and behold they offered him a job. The apartment complex we hoped for had ONE opening and we got it, our family offered to come help with the move, the weather was perfect through the three day drive from CO to FL. All things came together with perfection and while there is great sacrifice for this move, there is and will continue to be great reward.
Now that we are here, I am eager to share with you what we do with this great blessing. We will have to be intentional daily to choose to embrace life, to continue to grow and change and to not fall back to old habits and ways. I am also quite excited to share all the number of things we have already learned along the way in just the past few months. I hope you will follow us on our journey, I encourage you to ask us questions and our biggest hope is that you are inspired to make the change in your life that you have been longing for. Scoot to the edge, breathe, and trust that all things will work together for your good!