FIVE YEARS OF CHANGES AND WE'RE BACK TO WHERE WE STARTED

Five years.  It seems like a long time, yet it's not really.  We have gone through several life altering changes in the past five years, but we are now actually doing exactly the same thing we were doing five years ago this week.  Getting used to a new home!

Five years ago this week we both retired from long time employment at our church's college.  We had sold our home and bought a trailer that was to be our home for what we thought would be ten years.  God changed the timeline to what He thought we should be doing, and now this week we bought a home and sold our trailer!  Oh it was a smaller trailer than the one we had five years ago, one for camping not full time living, but I thought it ironic that the dates lined up so perfectly!  And we have been living in a duplex for three years, but we did now buy a home again, which is exactly five years since we sold our last home.

Research has shown that buying, selling, moving and changing life styles is one of the most stressful things in one's life.  We have been through all of those things, plus the death of our mom, the severe illness of our daughter, and numerous other challenges in the past five years.  We were homeless nomads, traveling the USA in our big fifth wheel trailer, calling it home wherever we happened to be parked.  Then we moved back home when mom became ill, and moved into the duplex, traveling only a couple of months in the winter time like regular Minnesota Snowbirds.  Now we again are homeowners, starting on a thirty year mortgage at the time everyone else has their homes paid for!  And last night we sold our camping trailer.  I guess the winter trips are now a thing of the past, too.

But I started to talk about stress.  And believe it or not, I'm not stressed!  Somehow this seems right.  Somehow I think this is exactly what God wants me to be doing right now.  Why?  I don't know, but He must have something planned for me.  I have long been searching for something to do, some way to help, somehow to make a difference for someone.  I haven't yet found what I want to do, but things are becoming clearer.  I have a few things in mind to check out once we're settled in here, and I am confident God will lead me to what He wants me to be doing.

Meanwhile, this new place seems like home already.  I'm at peace in these rooms.  As I sort through the boxes of belongings, trying to find a place to store everything, I am again reminded how incredibly blessed I am!  I have so much!  Too much.  Where is it all going to go?  I have large piles for donation already, and there will be much more added.  I am settling in to our new home.  And to show how settled in I am, we are putting up a clothesline!  Now that means I live here, and I have no regrets.  We are back where we started, and I believe this is where we belong.