The Travelers2 Move East

WHAT?!?!?!?!?! Yes… you read that right. We are moving east of the mountains. With such an “unknown” in our economy and world today, we have been praying about our options.

You, like many, may be asking, “Why are we moving again? You love your house, yard, area where you live! Why do you want to move away from that? And…you will be moving away from us!”

Well…because after much angst and prayer, we believe that it gives us the opportunity to own a home without having a mortgage, which has been a goal of ours for a while. Can you imagine that option in this day and age here? Yah…me either. What if I were ever to be alone, could I afford to live where I live? No. If I had to sell our home because I couldn’t do it alone, could I even afford to rent? The answer is no. Think about your life right now where you could live without a mortgage payment! Wouldn’t it give you a even better lifestyle? It takes two people in most cases to pay the daily living expenses. We don’t want to be in any of the above positions. So… we have been talking to God about other options. What were they?

1. Move out of state. THAT was an awesome idea! But then, it makes it hard to see our kids and other family members and friends.
2. The cost of moving that far also! Moving is expensive even for this move we are in.
3. Look around for where housing is less expensive and you can get more for the money, with possible opportunities to have no mortgage payment.
4. To look at areas that are suited for our desire for small town living, affordable housing, and still drivable to have friends and family over or for us to go to the west side.

Ping pong!! Ping Pong!!!

So….the area we decided on is still within 4-5 1/2 hour drive from where the family lives, depending on which pass you go over, and central for me with a couple of friends in the area, and 2 cousins, and a niece and her husband within a few miles. So that is where the door opened and we are walking through the door. This will be a new experience for me in many ways. But I think I will like the laid back atmosphere we experience there. We also like the wild life and lakes close by. I like that.

Here comes the real honest part. We have to move to that new place. I hate moving. This will be the sixteenth time I have moved since 1996. It requires managing a move, as well as, selling the house you are in or leaving a rental. I hate paperwork and there is tons of it when buying and selling! Staging is such a pain. What happened to this is home as it was, which is quiet and comfortable, and then all these changes have to be made for the potential buyer to want to buy it? That is a big *SIGH*. You have to stage it. If you have ever looked at pictures I have posted, you know what I’m talking about. I have a lot to stage…right out the door or where ever I can find to hide it. So hard to move and sell at the same time. But I have done this so many times, that my moving brain kicks in and away I go!! I have mostly de-JoAnn’d my home this week. Still have a ways to go but its getting there. I dream about boxes. And to top it off, I am a bit concerned in how to make a home look welcoming when all your things that make it that way are now gone! So now I have to rethink it a bit so it doesn’t appear empty. Right now it almost echos. LOL!

However, I am choosing to trust the process and I have never backed down from a challenge. And…this is a challenge at this stage of life. However, it is exciting in that I have a chance to make another home our sanctuary in retirement. That is important to me. We will not have the some of the conveniences there for a while. For example, summers may be very warm and I’m not a hot weather person. We will have no AC in the home there for a while. Enter the floor model for the room probably. But you know, I know God is going to be right there with me. He will encourage me, bring that homey feeling in this house also. He will remind me of always being grateful for what we have. I pray over each house we lived in and I am trusting God with all the details. I know it will all come together. Now… I am now praying for just the right person to come along and love this home we are now in as much as we did. He can do it! It will go quickly is my prayer!

So it is east of the mountains in Washington state that we are headed for. This Monday we will go over once again to handle some things and maybe get measurements. In the mean time, I have been selling items right and left because there will not be room to have them there. I am happy however that it has worked because the more sold, the less work to move. It also defrays the cost of expenses we will incur in the meantime. Isn’t God good?! He sure is!

I guess I felt I should share this because sometimes in our lives, God asks us to do something totally different…maybe even difficult and uncomfortable. Others make think it is ridiculous. You see, sometimes God just wants to stretch us in a season, and we just have to hold tight to His hand. He never takes us places that He can’t give us the grace to endure, and eventually come to see His hand in it. We may not even know the purpose at the time, but we will. In this case, we see His hand working already. Very grateful.

So…as you shake your head at what we are doing, don’t shake it too hard, but instead, bow your head and pray for our process with our home there, as well as, the sale of our home here. I would appreciate that very much. There is a lot of hard work and joy that has went into our home here, so I know there is someone out there that will feel as we did when we walked through the door, and they will want to make it theirs.

May God grant you the courage you may need also right now in an area of difficulty in your life, and may you feel His presence in every way.

The Travelers2 are on our way to just that…God turned the page. It’s another chapter in our story.

Until next time…

~JoAnn