Working and Waiting

The future draws nearer, as always. (And yet it's always the same distance; funny how that works.) We're filling our last month here in Missouri by working like crazed woodchucks on the house projects. I've been cleaning, packing, and planning. Aaron has finished the deck, the painting and almost all the little projects upstairs. Now all that remains is the basement.

It seems very daunting to me: wiring, drywall, flooring, ceiling, paint. My husband, who is on track to give Bob Vila a real run for his money someday, assures me that it will all be done before we know it, and none of it is as difficult as I make it sound. I can only hope that he's right, and I'm not. Since that's usually the case, there is cause for optimism.

A very sweet couple has expressed interest in purchasing our house, and we are so excited to work with them as we finish these last projects and prepare to head out into the great beyond. The thought of leaving our home in the hands of people who will appreciate it is an amazing blessing, and a huge weight off our shoulders.

I spent the last week measuring every little piece of our new RV when I went to Oklahoma to visit family and help with VBS. I have pictures and dimensions for every cabinet and cubby hole, and am already thinking about what I can cram where. How many pairs of jeans do we each need? How many shoes? Will I be able to fit my crate of curriculum and my box of extra books? What tools can Aaron fit into the space underneath? Where will we hang our bicycles?

These questions will all have answers in the near future (I hope). Until then we continue to work, plan, dream, and sort. Much trash has been disguised as treasure over the last few years, and I have to separate the one from the other. Some things are easy to discard, and others give me pause, but, all in all, it's been an unexpectedly joyful experience.

Ta-Da!

We are now officially RV owners. With the help of a few trusted relatives we purchased a 2007 Jayco Jayflight. It has two bunks in a "room" at one end and a master bedroom at the other. In the middle is one couch, one little table with just enough room for four chairs, and a tiny kitchen. (Don't worry, there's a bathroom set-up as well.)

Aaron and I haven't actually seen it yet, but our parents have all had the opportunity to check it out, and we have complete faith in their judgement and knowledge. I will go to join our children at their Grandmas' houses in one week, and will start taking pictures, making measurements, and possibly despairing over how little room there really is in a 32' 5th wheel.

We have read many books, watched online videos, searched blogs and RV websites, and communicated with other "full-time families" to prepare ourselves as much as possible, but I hope that we are under no illusions as to how different this life will be than anything in our previous experience.

I look forward to the experiment, anyway. Regardless of the outcome, we will have learned and grown, and if we can be used by God as something other than a parable of caution to the unwise in the midst of our endeavors, then whatever comes will be worth...well...whatever comes.

I May Have a Problem

Since the kids are visiting Grandmas and Grandpas in Oklahoma, we are working sun-up to sun-down to prepare our home for what we hope will be its brief stay on the real estate market, then its new owners, who are surely out there somewhere. There is a new deck out back, which has been about one week in the making. I am covered in wood stain, and my husband has a tan like he did back in the farm boy days. Today, while he put in the stairs, I focused my attention on the windows. Then I heard the siren call of my books.

I've packed almost all of them into boxes, organized by genre and author where appropriate. Out of the mass, these are the two that received the extra treatment of a Ziploc bag before they were placed in the cardboard box.  These are, believe it or not, two of my favorite books of all time. One discovered in childhood, and one discovered in my college years.

Dear Rat was one of those mysterious books that just appear in a family bookshelf, and no one can trace its origin. I only remember stumbling across it as a small child. It is the story of a young rat in Paris, who solves a mystery and falls in love. The first-person narration is wonderful, and it may have been my first introduction to the world of detective fiction. (The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew entered my life at around the same time.)

Berlin Diary, on the other hand, is the journal of a famous news correspondent in WWII. William Shirer (one of the Murrow boys) went on to write the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, also an excellent book. His diary, though, is great for any student of WWII, or anyone who is curious about life in a culture of increasing aggression and self-conceit. (Don't the two often go hand in hand?) It begins in 1934 and ends when he returns to the U.S. in December of 1940, telling the tales of the birth pangs of broadcast journalism and the on set of one of the darkest stains on human history.

If I could, I'd protect all my lovely books, but I know that most of them would be easy to replace, or would not break my heart if I didn't have them in storage after all. Well, let's be honest, if I could, I'd bring them all along with me in the RV, but that's not going to happen.

However, since Dear Rat is out of print, and Berlin Diary is a first edition (yes, I have another one that I keep to actually read), they will receive the special treatment. They don't get a place in the box of antique books, but they do get to rise above the rest of the paper hoi polloi.

Oh, the Pain

In many ways, clearing our house of all the 'things' we've collected over the years has been an enjoyable, even cathartic, experience. I have no trouble purging clothes, furniture, kitchen gadgets, decorations...most of the things in my house hold no particular attachment for me.

That being said, I do have a weakness, a housekeeping Kryptonite if you will. Books. Over the years I have aquired and purged books with a ruthless regularity, yet still found myself, many times, with more books than I can store. In the last six months I've given away or sold literally hundreds, yet there are hundreds more lining the walls of our schoolroom.

It isn't only my personal collections that are weighing on my soul, but all those books I've collected for the children. We use them in schooling (or might someday, you never know!) and take a bagful with us wherever we go. What if we need to know about the Aztecs suddenly while out on the road, but I don't have a book about ancient South/Central American civilizations?

Obviously, carrying them all around with us in an RV is not an option. Both space and weight prohibit such an action. Yet I cannot help but feel sad at the thought of all those lovely books that I've selected through the years just sitting in boxes. We will switch them out on our trips back "home" to our family and storage container, but it still gives me pause.

I suppose it's the same for everyone. We all have that one area where we are still firmly rooted to this old world. For me it's books, for my husband it's tools. My son is going to have to leave his trampoline and pick a limited amount of video games, and my daughter will not be able to take her pool full of crawdads and all her art supplies.

It's all part of the journey. I need to just get out my boxes and start filling them up with the things I currently think I can't live without. My day to day life will probably not be much different. Oh, but it hurts!

And So it Begins

This adventure is, as yet, in our dreams, plans and future, although the latter rapidly approaches. We are now searching for our new portable home, debating the rival merits of converted buses, Fifth-wheel RV's, Travel Trailers, and other things that I knew nothing about only one year ago.

We hope to leave our "stuck to the ground" home in less than two months, then it's only a matter of moving, selling and storing our belongings, and hitting the road. We plan to work with a volunteer disaster relief service, but until we're ready for our first job, I won't go into those details.

Life is too comfortable, and we feel increasingly that God wants more from us than our current patterns of living for a salary and house I can't keep clean. If we believe that true faith is to "love the Lord with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself," which we claim to do, then we should live out that love and teach it to our children with actions rather than just words.

We hope you'll join us in our new life by following along with blogs, praying that we will keep our hands off the controls of destiny, and giving us a smile if we pass you on the highway.