It’s a journey

It’s funny how things come around, isn’t it? My husband and I are house shopping again, as of about a month ago.

I’ve written some about my wrestling with where we currently live in this post and this one and this one. Over the last few months, I’ve been learning to be content and to place-make with whatever time we do have in our current house.

Apparently I’m rubbing off on my kids — while helping me transplant some flowers and raspberry plants last weekend, my almost-9-year-old commented “This looks SO pretty. I’m glad we’re working on it, even if we do move soon.”

In the last few weeks, my husband has also caught the moving bug. While I’ve been stalking Zillow for months, he’s now noticing places for sale and looking them up alongside me. It’s a direct answer to prayer — I’d told God last winter that I wouldn’t bring up the idea of moving to him again; he would have to be the one to initiate the conversation.

We have two big things influencing this decision to start taking steps toward moving, yet they’re also the two things I’m having the hardest time identifying what I want…

Location (isn’t that how it always is in real estate?)

To put it simply, we’re strongly tied to both our school (where he teaches and the kids attend) and to our church (where I work part-time and we volunteer). We make the trip to school 5 times a week (plus maybe a football game or concert here and there), and to church 4-6 times depending on the week.

And they’re 30-35 minutes apart. Currently we’re 5 minutes from church and 30+ to school.

Do we split the difference and end up with a 15-20 minute drive no matter which direction we need to go? Or do we choose one side or the other, and just know we’ll have a much longer drive half of the time?

Which community do we embed ourselves in? Currently it’s really easy to invite friends over for lunch after church. But if we want to do anything with school friends we have to be the ones to travel… and travel far… which honestly doesn’t ever happen. And would splitting the difference be the best of both sides or the worst?

My Enneagram-9-ness is coming out… I don’t know what I want. I can see the benefits and drawbacks of every option.

House size

Our current home is in a nice little neighborhood, but I think it’s definitely the size of a starter-home, or for a family with two kids or less. It’s worked beautifully for us the last 10 years, but our girls are getting older and bigger. My husband and I are both introverts, and 3 girls are LOUD.

Yet while we’re introverted, we do enjoy hospitality (just in small doses 😉 ). When we do have another family over, we barely have enough room for everyone to sit. We can’t easily host a small group or Bible study or family Christmas.

But we also share a desire for simplicity and minimalism. One of the houses we looked at recently we agreed was TOO big for us. Our kids actually have a very limited amount of toys compared to some of their friends.

Finding that happy middle — and within our private-school-teacher-salary-budget — is hard.

I don’t have any answers. It’s still a journey that we’re smack in the middle of. Maybe someday, when we’re on the other side, I’ll be able to write more eloquently about the lessons we’ve learned in this part of our story.

In the meantime, I hope it’s okay to use this space to process through some thoughts and hopes and doubts and feelings.