envision #wholemama
Every February for the last 16 years, Isaac and I have celebrated our anniversary with a few rituals. One of which is going over our goals for the year.
It is the beginning of the year and the start of another year of marriage for us, so it is a fabulous time to envision what it is we want for the next year, 5 years and longer.
Isaac is such a great visionary. Before he builds something or creates a work of art, he always envisions it in it’s entirety first. It is always drawn to scale and planned out. He believes that once he sees it, it’s half-way to completion! It is pretty natural for him to have goals and plans, he meets them, too, so it must work! I’m thankful he can lead us in this conversation, I’m more of a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of gal and this forces me to look deep inside to see what I want, to meditate on what God wants for me, for us and for our family.
There is our business we talk about and plan our schedule, progress we want to accomplish at our (old) homestead, trips we want to take. We talk about each of our kids and just generally touch on the most important things in our lives.
As we get to our long term visions, the same desire comes up year after year after year:
To have a simple, paid-for homestead.
That’s it! Easy enough, right? We have had this vision since our first (16) was 2 years old. We started off on that path by selling our house and buying and living in a big, green school bus!
Alas, we got side tracked. The opportunity was there but we fell for the get a mortgage plan and Isaac built us our dream house. After 11 years there, with the same goal and vision we’ve had for years (we believe God put the vision there and just wouldn’t let it go), we decided to go for it!
You can read that story here. To make a long story short, though, our house sold quickly. It was a horrible and painful experience in so many ways but at the same time it was freeing and felt so right. We walked away with pretty much exactly what we put into the place,which wasn’t a lot, and hundreds of thousands less than we could have in 2007.
We’ve spent hours and hours in conversation (our poor children are ready to just get on with it) talking about our vision of being largely independent and free from debt so that we can travel as a family. We prayed for guidance and waited for some doors to open. Envisioning our future, designing our new life, starting over.
The door that opened for us was 15 acres of raw land with a little creek and a lot of hills, butting to state land and close to the water. The perfect place to start over.
I am so happy to say that we will be living our vision very soon! But we had to envision it first, we have to be designing our future! This has been a TON OF WORK and it’s far from over. Our lifestyle is changing drastically and we are so happy to start envisioning what our new life will be like – in a simple, paid for homestead!
It definitely feels that our vision and God’s plan for our little family are merging and I’m so thankful that He placed this vision in our minds and courage in our hearts to pursue!
The Good Life With Kids 