Finding Peace...Finding Contentment

with where you are in life. Is that not what life is all about in the overall pursuit of it as you come to realize that you are after the heart of God and to follow the convictions He has given...not what makes sense, not what sounds good to everyone, not even the over spiritualization of what you think is taking place in your own life or anyone else's. Not fearing the world's or friends' opinions as your direction once again changes like the winds of spring. One of the many reasons I married Brad was because of his wander lusting ways. I was right there with him. I had the same dreams, the same pursuits in life, the same love of adventure and everything new, yet unseen, yet untouched, yet to be fulfilled. I still have it in my blood, though not as strongly as it once was, I suppose. This is, after all, the same girl who had been on 6 overseas mission trips by the time I had hit the age of 19. The same one who hitchhiked in the hills of Slovakia and wandered around leisurely until I found my way back on the streets of Poland. And still the same wander lusting girl that rode a train through Germany, Czeskoslovakia, Romania and Poland. It was this same love of adventure and never sitting still that I fell in love with in Brad. The adventures still waiting in the wings of time, the love of everything still unseen, the places that we had only dreamed of living. There are so many things to do, so many places to live in a lifetime. And it is this precise love that keeps Brad searching the world over for every fire dept that hires. And this same love that keeps him searching to live everywhere but wherever we happen to be. In the time that we have lived here we have yet to hang a picture on the walls due to his unending ways of finding other depts to work for, cities to live in, and places to see. And I must admit, I am usually right there with him. Thoughts of the high snow peaked mountains of Montana to the rocky shores of Maine to the high desert of New Mexico. It all is a possibility given his job and the easy transition that it is to test and then relocate to, no doubt, somewhere that pays more than San Angelo ever in a lifetime probably will. So, as he called me in many months ago to let me see that FW and Hurst were hiring the allure was there for him. It took me awhile to ever warm up to the idea of ever returning back home. After all, we had the entire world to see. But, as my family's wounds began to heal and we began to embrace each other and what has been torn away from all of us from so many years of lies and deceptions Brad and I both began to realize the invaluable thing that family provides. So, after being so overtly opposed to ever moving back to the city I began to get excited once again and the thought of family overtook me with what we now had in each other and what our little family had to return to in our bigger family. And, of course, we probably would not be running the possibility of ever having another baby born on our bathroom floor completely and entirely unassisted. Moving back meant we actually had the ability to welcome each new one into our arms in the warm and safe comfort of home with our beloved midwife by our side. So, there was lots to return to and I began to fall in love all over again. My own spirit of adventure returned as I began to search the world over in search of the perfect farm home. And we found more than a few options that were easy to fall in love with. And there was the part of both of us that loved the idea of moving on yet again and just change in general. We love change. I always thought Brad and Curtis had the moving bug pretty bad until I read the biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder. "Pa", aka Charles Ingalls, gives a whole new meaning to dragging his family all over the west side of the US from north to south back to north again. And as we read through Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone I realized that Brad is not alone at all in his love for change and living somewhere different every 12-18 months. In fact, compared to some of these men who left their wives for months on end, Brad has a very mild case of the Wild at Heart thing men seem to have going.

So, we planned and schemed together of all that we would do, all that we would take on and all of the family get togethers we were now free to embrace as we planned the move back to the northeast part of the state. And it humbles me to say, we both sincerely and honestly thought it was our hearts being turned toward home and the Lord compelling us that direction. I believed with everything within me it was the Lord asking us to be willing enough to take this on and leave our familiar territory here to move on and take on a new chapter in our lives. Little did we know that we would indeed be taking on a new chapter but that consisted of eventually realizing it probably meant be willing to stay right where we are. I feel as though through all of this God has just tested and asked both of us through this process if we are remaining unattached and willing to cling to Him, not material ideas and dreams. This may not consist so much of our location but where our heart is and how willing we are to be flexible......as in flexible enough to bend as the tree but not break. Are we wiling to leave here if He tells us to do so but are we willing to stay here also if He chooses not to do a thing at this point but fulfill us here. I tend to get so focused on one given thing that once the direction is set than that is where we are going...come hell or high water. Maybe this has just been to see if we remain willing to go but content to stay. Do I really need to think of everything I dislike here in order to let go and move on and do I really have to convince myself that city life is not all that bad. Or can I come to a point in life where I just accept it for what it is and move willingly to wherever it is we are supposed to be? How in the world can God ever use us freely if He is constantly having to chip away at a wall of pretenses or oppositions or preconceived ideas that withhold us from just saying "Yes" immediately? Have I gotten to that point? No. Like, really no. And it is evident as Brad once again has a change of heart and really realizes what we have been blessed with here and I go through the whole process of letting go just one more time in our married life. Letting go of everything I had to pump myself up for and everything I fully embraced finally, only to be turned around and headed the other direction. And it has not been without lots of consulting on his part with me before ever coming to a decision to reverse the plans in action. But as we sat and evaluated we were forced to look at how exceedingly and abundantly God has enriched our lives here and how very much we have been blessed financially. Not only would he suffer a paycut with a change of depts but he would lose rank and, after 10 yrs in the fire service, once again be reduced to a mere rookie. As it stands right now, he stands to make Lt in the spring and will probably make Cpt just a mere 3 yrs later. In 3 yrs he would probably not even be eligible for Lt on a new dept and, if he was, the chance of a position being available is slim. With those advances in rank come massive amounts of a salary increase. So, we sat down and evaluated our finances carefully. After nearly 10 yrs of marriage and many trail and errors within our budget and learning the hard way that debt is not an option we have finally reached complete and total financial freedom with the exception of our house. When we went Friday morning to refinance it the mouths of the bankers and loan officers alike dropped open as they pulled our credit and discovered that we have no "liabilities", no credit cards, no debts, no anything. The small amount we were refinancing was our entire debt in life. She once again, in shocked amazement, asked how many children we have and what Brad does for a living. She had all of his pay stubs before her and all of our entire financial status lay before her. She was astounded. Despite the mess that our previous house became 2 yrs ago and despite the way in which it was finally sold we qualified for refinancing without even any questions at all. It was immediate. The feeling of sitting in there with that much leverage was a phenomenal experience for both of us. We both felt the freedom that came with it. It was a very life changing thing to be a part of. For the first time in life we saw the power and the freedom before us of having absolutely no debt. Our interest rate was dropped by 2 points and though we had to escrow, which we have never done, it still dropped our payments by 200.00 a month. After talking it over and refiguring we knew beyond everything that not only it is a goal but it is a very real thing that we will have our house paid for in a mere 3 yrs. And the debate started on whether to stay or whether to go. "Should I stay or should I go?" was playing like a broken record throughout my mind.....and has been for these last 2 seemingly infinite weeks of indecisiveness on both of our parts. We both knew that moving would require us to triple what we owed in a mortgage unless we were going to be content with neighborhood suburb life again. And both of us knew we would not resort to that and not ever require that of any of us, having had the freedom we have had here. Brad had every intention of going to finance a tractor and celebrate after we refinanced. I had been in turmoil over this for 2 entire weeks by this point but had finally realized there was no changing his mind. So, instead of nagging I decided to make the best of it and get excited over what we would now be able to accomplish, be it here or wherever the new place is, as the tractor would obviously be going with us to accomplish what we desire as we begin to build our own homestead. But, after sitting in the bank and realizing the freedom we had just been given after the many years of hard work and being so dedicated to paying off debt, his heart began to change. Upon walking out of the bank he declared that we have worked too hard to get to this point and we would not be financing anything, but sticking to the deep convictions that God has worked so hard to instill in both of us. There would be no financing of a tractor. We have learned to overcome and make due with everything else as we have worked these years to pay off debt and so we could undoubtedly get creative and make it work without owning a tractor. I was so entirely ecstatically relieved but in some strange way it was yet another disappointment yet to be dealt with. The hopes of everything we had planned to do here. Everything we had begun to get excited about last week as we planned our own farm right here on our 3 acres, soon to be 6 as we purchase the gin land. We know what it is now to put money into savings, as we have never been able to even think about savings before. We know what it is to operate strictly in cash and both of us love knowing we can go hand Mr Gin owner cash and walk away with the land. So, we wait for the perfect time, when we know we are ready for it and when we both know the timing is right, and we will make our way over and do a cash transaction for the land. And both of us have great plans to farm and cultivate the little that we have been so blessed to grow and learn on here, as we do our trial and error farming endeavors before taking on the bigger things we long to aspire to. We both have fallen in love with farming and homesteading. And we see not only the benefits and the money saving ways,but the tremendous change to even healthier diets as we raise our own beef and chicken, gather on our homegrown eggs, milk our own goats and grow our own uncontaminated veggies. It is something that absolutely excites both of us.

But it is an ever changing journey. We are being brought to a point that we are realizing what is right before us without ever going anywhere. And despite the depression I have had to fight off as I come to terms with the fact that we are staying and nothing is really changing drastically, after pumping myself up for change in every way, there is a peace and contentment with coming to the realization that all we have been given is right here. Not only have is it been given freely and extravagantly to us, but that it is absolutely beyond us how blessed we are right where we are. We are surrounded by friends that are a wealth of info and knowledge as we take our first baby steps into homesteading. Despite the lack of instant gratification of owning a monstrous beast of a tractor that sits on our property at every whim we have, by the time we do have it it will also be debt free and paid for in cash. There will be no tractor payment, no large mortgage we had to take on in the name of moving, no being stretched so thin we can hardly breathe as we take a paycut and suffer the expenses of moving 300 miles. The Lord has been incredibly merciful in giving us the means to attain financial freedom when He saw that we were serious about heeding the convictions He was working on within our hearts. I see families still striving and dreaming of the day they can get to this point and here we sit and think of ruining it all, in the name of "if we paid it off once, we can do it again". One of the most important things to us is to instill these things within our children. And how can they ever learn the value of being debt free and never getting themselves into a mess unless they see us, as their parents and teachers, modeling it for them? How can they learn what it is to wait for something and to work for it if it is never seen in their young lives as they grow. Grayson was highly in tune with the whole tractor proceedings and when the call was finally made that we would not even head down that road or give it any more thought at all due to the debt factor he cheered and proclaimed that Brad had made the right decision. It kind of stumped Grayson this whole time as to why in the world we would ever take on debt after having seen us work so hard to get out of it. He has been the oldest, so therefore the most affected one, while watching our efforts of attaining financial freedom. So this status is as treasured by him as it is by us. He knows what a miracle it is to finally be at this place in life and already hearing him make business plans with Curtis Wade is worth it all and what we have been through as a couple. To see it manifested in the lives of our children is what it is all about. It is one of those things that is indescribable. Just when you feel you cannot breathe for all of the blessings that abound, to see it come alive in your children make you realize that life cannot get any better.

I have come to terms with it, after coming off my emotional roller coaster. We have the ability now to make monthly trips to visit everybody and we already have a child exchange plan in action in which all cousins will see each other regularly. And reality is, with as far out as we would've had to live to be able to afford any amount of land, our trips in to see family would have been severely limited for a long while. Mortgage goes up, commute time triples, distance to town grows therefore gas expense grows, salary goes down. As it is, we can come and go from FW dropping kids off and picking kids up as they spend a week at a time together. And when it comes time to do our garden harvest their crew will come camp out here and have a harvest party as we all bring in the garden. And as their garden gets up and going we will all go there and help them out. So, we walk away from this whole moving thing with the best of all worlds....more financial freedom than we have ever known, the ability to come and go from FW as we please despite rising gas prices, maybe not as much quantity time, but definitely more quality time spent with family and a house and property that we have been in love with since the day we first saw it.

So, as the plans change and evolve we have begun to plan for spending our lives here. I did make Brad promise through all of this that this is the last time and after definitely deciding to settle here that that will be the last of the talk, the last of the searching, the last of the wandering and toying with new places. Once this is it, we are here for a lifetime. No more Border Patrol thoughts, no more new depts, no more dream states. After this is over and he has made up his mind not to test in Nov for Fw that we lay it all down and embrace what we have been given here.......the guys that he works with that have become family to both of us, the whole dept that loves all of our children, the friends that have surrounded us here, the dream home of a doll house we are living in, the land that we have to work with. And if we do relocate it will only be to move to more land within this same area as we begin to grow our farm. But no more emotional roller coasters of the here, there and everywhere dept changes. But after the revelation of where we are financially here and what we have I think he was on the same page. We both see it and we both know it. So, unless God moves mountains within both of us we are here to stay. And he promised.

So it is that we are settling here. Our baby chicks are due to hatch on August 15th or so and will be ready to pick up on the 16th. We converted one of the old storage buildings into a chicken coop. Stumbling across that was a gold mind, as we discovered that it in its past life it used to be a very well built, expertly designed coop that had been converted to a mere shed. Once we cleaned it out we discovered it had roosts and a nesting shelf that boxes once sat on and as we pulled up the floor we were amazed to even find it 1/2 covered in droppings board and the other 1/2 in plywood, perfect for the pine shavings. We even found the old hanger that used to hang the feeder. So with some slight modifications it will once again be a small castle of a coop. So it is that our chickens arrive next month. The dairy goats will come after we have cleared the land and planted coastal, which may take a few months. But the goal is to have them by spring. Once we get both pastures planted we'll also take on our first cow that will hopefully supply us with a year's worth of beef. The goal is to have the 1/2 acre garden cultivated and ready to plant by spring also. That will take time, as the ground desperately needs to be rebuilt due to it depleted, hot, dry, west TX status. The ground is hard and dry and cracked so we will have to work on tilling it up, building the soil and getting some form of water to it. But with our soon to arrive chickens we are off to a good start!!

And among some of the biggest plans as we evaluate stay vs go, is the matter of adoption. For the last 2 years Brad and I have known that it's not a matter of if but just a matter of when. We both feel it and we are both open to it. Up to this point, finances and income have stood in our way at every turn. We seriously pursued it as we were in the midst of moving here but after finding out what financial requirements there are we laid it down for awhile and trusted that the Lord would make it known when the timing was right. We both knew He was working on us and maybe it was not for the here and now, but for the heart preparation for what is to come. It doesn't take away the longing once it really becomes part of your heart but it does make you treasure the profound events of what is still yet to come. As we have taken into consideration what staying here means it also brought up that adoption is a very real thing now. Our finances are swiftly coming into order and with some slight modifications we could easily turn the playroom into more bedrooms, as we know we will eventually be doing that anyway. The possibility to expand here is somewhat limitless, as we know we could make another 4 bedrooms out of the playroom and the attic above. So, as our savings account grows and we become more dependant on the land and less dependant on the grocery store and the Lord moves on our hearts that now is the time we have the ability to adopt. We both know it may be next month that the Lord moves on our hearts or 5 years from now but we are both prepared to take that on in every way when He says "Go!". I think if we have shown oursleves trustworthy in every way with willing and open hearts that God will be faithful to move and do whatever He needs to do with our finances in order to adopt. International adoption has a massive price tag that goes along with it and, despite the freedom we now live in, it is still a huge obstable to overcome...but not to the God we serve and whose reserves are limitless, who owns all of Heaven and earth and has every resource at His hand. He has been so good and so faithful to give us the ablility to get ourselves out of debt but I also know that it was our determination and stout heartendess to choose to go through with that. There were many other things the money could've easily been spent on. I know that He is establishing in us the trustworthiness that He has so longed to see for so many years. And when the day comes to go for it and start the adoption proceedings that He will supply every financial need that arises knowing that He can trust us with it in every way. He has done it once to enable us to get out of debt and He will do it again to bring His children home. I am learning that He waits with expectation and yearns for an opportunity for you to call out to Him and give Him the room to work miracles in your life. But for us, that came after many many years of painful learning experiences and lessons to get us to the point that He could work with us, for us and through us.

So, we stay here.....and we farm and he continues to work for the fire dept and eventually we will adopt. We find contentment with what it is we already have and not what we always see just ahead of us. We continue paying off our mortgage as quickly as we can and we remain free of all other debts and of acquiring anymore. What is that quote? "You travel the world over in search of yourself only to return home to find it." At this point I'm not sure where home is. I thought it was here, then I knew it was there, but now I am coming to discover it is wherever God really has in mind for us and where we can live according to the principles He had laid on our hearts. And for now, that place is here.

More of our farming beginnings will be posted later as I gather up pictures. First and foremost is the coop. The 1st tractor rental will consist of leveling out the backyard to get the swingset up, plowing up the land for the garden and then moving on to the pastures to clear them. We are hoping to wipe that out with the first rental. The 2nd should consist of tilling up pastures and trying to get the coastal going.

And for your comment Sue Ellen.....is it nearly impossible to make just one loaf of bread and not have everybody eat it. In fact, I got frustrated with it. It starts smelling good and everybody starts flocking to the kitchen. But I found a recipe that makes 5-6 loaves and I quit making mine in the bread machine that does just one loaf at a time. I'm starting to use the Kitchen Aid with the bread dough hook now until I can get the Bosch. That way we can eat one loaf and still have the others left for sandwiches. I still haven't transtioned over to making 100% of all of our bread needs but it is getting better. There for awhile I went through a phase where every loaf came out 3 inches high and weighed about 5 pds. I got frustrated with it. I finally figured out it was the old wheat I was using.....as I came to discover from Mother that she had had that wheat since I was in the 5th grade. Ugh! I can hardly wait until next time we put in an order with Montana Wheat!!! I plan on stocking up on fresh wheat berries and solving my bread issues! After coming to discover the old wheat issue I went and bought store bought whole wheat just to experiment and see if that really was my problem and the loaf came out perfect!