If I said I haven't had time to blog lately, I'd be lying. The truth of the matter is, I am totally and completely exhausted. An almost three year old and a five month old is no joke, folks. And have I mentioned that the five month old hates me sleep? So there's that.
A lot of you have asked where Clayton and I are moving. So I thought I'd answer that for you. You might be wondering why that takes an entire blog post. Well here you go...
We have gone back and forth on what we want to do a million times. I grew up moving from house to house every couple of years. My parents mom enjoyed flipping houses, so that's what we did. I didn't know any different. Clayton on the other hand, only lived in a few houses throughout his life. The one he spent most of his childhood in, his parents still live in. He loves that place. It sits on 35 beautiful acres outside of town, and to him that is home.
We have talked in the past about building a house somewhere else on that land, but it was always just an idea. It really boiled down to us just not being able to make a decision.
Fast forward a couple of years.
A few months ago, I started having really strong convictions about materialistic things. I have never been the person who had to have the best of the best or was always wanting something better. I consider myself to be a pretty simple person. Even still, I was feeling very convicted. We kept talking about how we needed a bigger house and we needed more land, and I just didn't have much peace about it.
I finally realized that we don't need a bigger house. We have two small children who are constantly under my feet, regardless of where I am. We eat dinner together as a family at the table. We spend our time together in the living room. We don't have TVs in any of our bedrooms. We don't even go into our bedrooms until it's time for bed. Really, we have plenty of space.
I spent a lot of time praying for God to guide us in the direction he wanted us to go. We knew it was getting to be time to move, we just didn't know where. We knew we would eventually end up in Diboll, and I want Knox to start school there if that is where he will end up.
A lot of people have preconceived notions of what it means to be a stay at home mom. The reality is, Clayton and I make a LOT of sacrifices for me to be able to stay home. We are a blue-collar, one income family. Our budget doesn't always work out on paper, but the Lord has provided for us for the almost two years that I've been staying home full-time. I wouldn't trade the time with my boys for anything, but sometimes the financial unknown is a scary thing.
We have so much to be thankful for, and we remind ourselves of that daily. We have a roof over our heads and we never go hungry. That's more than a lot of people can say. In 2012, 46.5 million people were living in poverty in the US. That is the largest number in all 54 years that the census has measured poverty. That is mind boggling. 46.5 million people.
Even still, it is so easy to get caught up in wanting more.
So there came another conviction. We could be doing so much more to help others. I finally realized that what I was really wanting, more than anything, was to not be tied to a mortgage anymore. I wanted the freedom to do more. Take our boys to see more things without worrying where the money was going to come from. But most importantly, I wanted to do more to help others. Those 46.5 million people living in poverty right in our own country. Every cent of our income goes to some bill or expense, and we decided it was time to change that. Our largest expense is our mortgage. So why not start there? I realize that sounds crazy. Stick with me.
Clayton got such a great deal on the house we are currently living in and we have put a whole lot of love and sweat equity into it. We stand to make a pretty good profit off of it when we do sell it. I looked at him one day a couple of months ago and said "I think we could build a house with the profits we make off of this one." He looked at me like I was crazy.
The more we talked, the more he understood my vision. He is incredibly handy. I am very resourceful (and handy). We can do a lot of the work ourselves. We can build a house that is big enough to suit our needs. In a few years, as we can afford it, we can add on the "extras" that we want.
We are so fortunate in that Clayton has incredibly generous, giving parents. When we presented our idea to them (which involved building said house on their land) they didn't even blink an eye before saying "absolutely."
We will be in the place that Clayton considers home. Knox will start school where we want him to. We will have a house that will meet our needs at this point in our lives. God provides.
So this is our little piece of paradise. It doesn't look like much now, but I can't wait to share the progress once we get the land cleared and get started!
And so the title of my blog holds true, everything I love is at the end of a dirt road.
