Gods Path

I am in awe of Gods orchestration of all the paths that have been crossed over the past few years since Matt has been on staff at GracePoint. The friends we have met, the relationships that have grown, friends we have seen move, paths that create a closer connection between people, the people we have been in bible studies with, the gals who were in my bible studies the paths that have all been led by God and the relationships that have grown all because a commitment to attend a bible study, attend church, friendships grew and no one new those paths crossed would be able to support and understand what you are going through now. A distant friendship can be brought closer in a short amount of time, but that path that God has laid out for why will not be known for a while. 

Today was a difficult day yet a celebration of Caleb Hockett's life, I don't know that i ever spoke directly with him, I got to know Mariah through a few bible studies and over the past few months Caleb has had more effect on my life then I could ever imagine.

I didn't know him. I only know his mom.

 The church was full today and that is only a SMALL SMALL portion of the people he had touched. Its hard to watch a family (Dad, mom and 6 brothers and sisters) go through this, not knowing the words to say, not knowing how to help, it helps to know he is with Jesus but that doesn't make the pain go away. Never underestimate the power of your understanding of faith and don't be shy to share it, you never know the impact it may have. I had a friend tell me tonight "it seems like when you take a deep breath, and just free-fall backwards into God's arms He gives you more than you could have ever expected." Remember that game? friends saying trust me I promise i won't let you fall, the friendships created on my path would do that for us, the community surrounding us will catch us just as God will.

I am amazed at the community that has surrounded this family, the out pouring of love for them. Could you imagine going through this with out community? I am thankful for all the friends that have crossed my path that I consider part of my community, part of a community that can hold each other up in difficult times, where you can lean on each others faith when yours is running dry. 

14 My friends, we beg you to warn anyone who isn’t living right. Encourage anyone who feels left out, help all who are weak, and be patient with everyone. 1 Thessalonians 5:14 

One of his favorite things to do was go fishing.... he lived more for Christ in his 8 years then I have in my 31 years...I bet he will have a line of people waiting to go fishing with him up there!  

As Pastor Jessey said in his message today "I want to grow up to be like him...compassionate, loving, caring."

What if our world was full of people with a heart for God like Caleb? What would it look liked if we all loved a little more, took off our selfish hats and let some one else go instead of our selves? What if we put off the stresses of home just to go to lunch with a friend who asks? How about we build those relationships that come across our paths and love, give grace and help each other grow to be better people.

As a mom it crushes my heart to see another mom witness her son going to heaven to be with Jesus, it crushes my heart to think about the pain that one goes thought no matter the age of the child, the life long pain that is laid on a moms heart as their child is laid to rest. Moms that have lost a child no matter the age or through a miscarriage, my heart aches for you, i pray for you that you will one day see them again and get to see their beautiful face.

As a community lets keep Hockett family in prayers for the next few YEARS, its our human nature to surround families shortly after an event like this, but as a community lets wrap our arms around them for years. Lets wrap are arms around relationships with those closest to us, so we know their fears, hopes and dreams. God has only put us on this earth for a short time, now lets love like Christ loves us and learn from Caleb's example.

Relationships

Relationships

This is one of the many things Matt and I were excited to see how they grow with our change

 Our relationship is improving, always a good thing learning to grow, love, respect, listen, give grace more and more to each other, attending church together. (this is hard to accomplish with Matt in his role and sick kids, its wonderful what that can do for our souls)

The quality of time with the kids is AMAZING, I feel like most Saturday are dedicated to just hanging out and playing with the kids

More quality time with parents/grandparents

Matt was able to spend a good week with his Dad, it had been a while and also he was able to meet Jacob

The family aspect for relationships is flourishing and can’t wait to see how God will continue to use this transition to grow the relationships

With some major events in our friends lives and some family it has really rained me back in to look at friendships and where and how I can be more relational with friends and family..that’s what this life is all about. If my life were to end today I would not want to regret any relationships not growing, with that being said I feel like there is some major resistance that I get when I try to schedule relationship growing things in, shellfish tendency’s get in the way, road blocks come up, kids get sick, schedules book up fast. I want to prevail through these trials that may seem simple but can really deter me from continuing pursing relationships.

Moving

We have been living at Matt’s Mom’s and Step dad’s place going on 10 weeks…how has it already been 2 months? How is it that summer is pretty much over? So many activities and friends to see yet and time is slipping by! Its been a whirl wind two months…Matt has been traveling a lot for district conference, time with his dad and staff retreat. Then we were overjoyed to have Matt’s dad able to stick around for about a week to hang out with us, the kids loved spending time with Papa Steve.

I love having less space. We have to move our storage unit (current one is in Vogla, we did not expect our house to sell as fast as it did and needed to start getting items out fast). I am not looking forward to seeing what is all on there, having the unit there has been good because now we can go back into it and see what we really don’t need, figure out what we really want to keep and donate/sell the rest of the stuff and be free from that weight of stuff. There is no need for the amount of stuff we have, plus if we don’t toss it now we will just have to keep moving it, we want to have a ‘light foot print’

The dogs have adjusted well, there is almost 4 acres of land and I Aussie has trimmed up some from being able to run a lot more. Mable of course loves the space and is always exploring outside of her boundaries, I just don’t have the wonderful neighbors to send her back home any more. Aussie has found his new favorite spot to hang out…in Papa Mike’s lap or Grandma Sharon’s warm spot on the couch, he is slowly starting to lay on our bed again more and more, before that was his comfort spot.

We miss our neighborhood. We miss our friends there. We miss the families in the same stage of life helping with dogs, catching frogs, kids, the open back yard, quick convos yelling across the yard. The neighbors at the end always going out of their way to wave. That green van that ALWAYS drove past. The grouchy old man. People stopping by on their walks/bike rides. The understanding of other things going on, but yet having powerful conversations in short amounts of time. Morgan asking “Where’s Wynn” or saying “I want to go see Wynn” and then hardly saying a word when we go over there., going out of her way to wave at him as we ride past. Her getting excited to see Eric and Rachel as they walk past. Confidently saying everyone is out side playing, but never going alone.  This all ties back to Relationships.

That’s what we miss, the relationships that were created and grew in the 8 years we were there.

“Live like no one else so you can live like no one else”

Paying off our debt is a huge reason why we took this leap of faith. Right now we fine tuning our budget and stacking up some savings (Baby Step 1) so we are ready for when the next murphy will strike!

These are just pictures off my phone I haven’t found the camera cord yet!

Morgan and Zeke flying a kite

Miss this neighborhood

Stud!

These two have so much fun together they could not get enough of these totes!

So big!

SkyZone for Evan's Birthday!

More Details!

We have received two responses from people:
1. That's such a great thing you will be truly blessed when you are debt free
2. YOU ARE CRAZY along with a dumbfounded look, like they can't even imagine what being debt free would feel like.

We have also heard lots of stories of people making other sacrifices to help them get debt free, or families setting up goals to be come debt free. We also got a call today from a friend and their family is doing the SAME THING! 2 year plan to live with the parents and be debt free! The blessings that will come of this will be amazing, being able to use our time to serve God and build relationships with a more focused effort.

I have a lot to learn about my faith and i think this is the perfect journey that i need in order to get my spirit set straight. We are selling many of our things giving up our worldly possessions our culture status of owning a home. Its a hard concept for others to grasp, its even hard for me at times. This time of year is the time of year I love our house the most, everything is green, the backyard is beautiful, everyone is extra friendly because we have all been locked up for the past 6 months, the kids love playing with the neighbors, the weather is perfect hammock weather...its so hard to think about giving this up, but what we are giving it up for is more time to serve God and building relationships more time as a family, more time to spend with friends, creating hobbies we enjoy as a family, watching our kids grow and being present in their lives instead keeping up with the Jones'.

As a society we have a problem with contentment, we are always reaching for the next 'status': dating, married, kids, kids to be out of the house, bigger house, etc. it happens to all of us and we get sucked in. One of my favorite pages to follow on Facebook is becoming minimalist most of his points fit right along with my feelings and things i am thinking through as we journey through this. This is from the post linked above:

As a result, the average credit card holder now carries 4 different credit cards in his or her pocket. Shopping malls outnumber high schools 2 to 1. 70% of Americans visit a shopping mall each week. Televisions outnumber persons in American homes. Home sizes have doubled in the past 50 years. And consumer debt has risen to 35% of household income.

Will Rogers said it like this, “Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like.”

just some things to ponder :)

There is a lot of energy spent on keeping up a home, keeping up with debt, keeping up with stuff. We are excited to see what kind of energy is freed up from making this change.

With my thoughts of today off my mind here are a few questions we have been asked:

Where will you work?
Same place! We are not leaving our current jobs, we will just be commuting. The commute will be about 40 mins.

Will it be hard?
Of course! There are lots of emotions that go into this decision. We are going against cultural norm and giving up the majority of our things, we are giving up our home and our comfort, what we have known for the last 7 years, the only home Morgan has known, we have wonderful memories of this home. We are going from 1800 sq ft to about 800 sq ft. 4 bed rooms to 2 bedrooms. One question we asked ourselves often was 'when isn't life crazy, when isn't life hard, we all have different paths God takes us down and no matter what it always seems a little crazy to other people. To us it was kind of a now or never type of thing, now or before life gets to out of hand. We don't want life to always be out of hand, we don't want life to always be crazy. We have 2 BEAUTIFUL children and if we don't make this change now we will miss them being little. We want to follow on Gods path and be able to follow him where he calls us, we know very well how life goes when we are not following him and we have chosen to make this decision to free us up from many things.

Will you buy another house? Time will tell, if God leads us. After we make our last payment we will be able to make better decisions, a lot can happen in 2 years so its in the cards, but we also are taking into consideration what God wants us to do with our time, keep up a house or serve him. Time and listening to God will help us answer that question.

What kind of debt do you have? STUDENT LOANS!! We are sitting about average for what most people have in student loans maybe a little less, no credit card debt a vehicle loan and personal loan (thanks Murphy for the last 2!)  We are in NO way in trouble with any creditors.We make all our payments on time and have no trouble with them, we just know that Murphy continues to strike when you are sitting with no savings, and we just can't continue to live in 'payment management mode' as i like to call it (managing payments and figuring out if you can afford anything else by adding another payment in).  One thing i have learned in talking to people about our situation is that when you say debt to some people they think...you are in trouble with creditors, to us debt just means debt we have student loans and personal loans that need to be paid off, no creditors.

How will Morgan respond? She thinks its cool that her and Jacob will share a room and that Grandma Sharon is building her a BIG room to sleep in :) she will love being able to see them a lot and i think she will love having more un-distracted time with us.

Have you listed your house?
Our house has sold! We are just waiting on the appraisal and inspection to be approved! When that comes through we will be out of the house by the end of June!


PS sorry for the lack of pictures i have lost the cord to the camera!

Live like no one else so you can live like no one else

We are in the middle of some big decisions and major changes. Anyone that is familiar with Dave Ramsey knows what the title of this post is all about and most of us struggle to grasp what that really is for our lives. We first took the Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace course about 6 years ago. We made some major changes adjusted how we were spending our money, started budgeting, took cash out, payed down some debt but we truly didn't grasp the "live like no one else so you can live like no one else concept" We canceled our TV for a while, went back to dumb phones, stopped eating out, taught the class a couple of times and changed our habits again but still didn't make a significant headway on our debt. In October 2013 Murphy got us good (Murphy's law - if it can go wrong it will go wrong) ...bathroom toilet leaked so we needed to tear out a portion of the sub-floor, and refinish the bathroom and Matt did an amazing job doing the majority of it himself (which saved a lot of money), the transmission went out in the Tahoe, Jacob was born in November and the Camry needed more repairs then it was worth and was not safe to haul a family around in any more. The only way we would have been able to avoid going further in debt is if we were on baby step 3 (save 3-6 months of income) but for the last 6 years we have been going back and forward between baby step 1 and 2 (step 1 $1000 in savings step 2 debt snow ball and pay off all your debt). 7 months after Murphy did his damage we have decided its time to "live like no one else so we can live like no one else"

We are selling our home, moving in with Matt's mom and step dad in Lake Preston and paying off ALL our debt in 2 years.

Yes you read that right. We are selling our home, moving in with Matt's mom and step dad and paying off ALL our debt in 2 years. Can you imagine being debt free in 2 years?! We are so excited to have that last payment within arms reach! Even with the adjustments we made before Murphy struck we couldn't see an end. THERE IS AN END IN SIGHT! Yes it will be a crazy 2 years we will have our own little area at Sharon and Mike's and the dogs can come with us, they have a few acres of land that the dogs will LOVE to run on. We will go from living on both our checks to living on one of ours with the other check going entirely debt.

Some maybe asking why not just rent in Brookings...If you live in Brookings you know the reality of renting in Brookings as a family is not cheap. There is no where in town we could rent for less then what we will be buying in gas to drive that wouldn't be a dump.

Some of you are thinking this is just to crazy, I could never do that!!! Others are jumping for joy for us to be out of debt in 2 crazy years!

We are selling our home and all the details of with who and what we are selling it for are yet to be worked out. Matt is working on that and of course we have looked into what Dave says and who is recommended by him in the area. We know that Volga is the hot place to be moving to and there are not many houses on the market right now plus we have an amazing location and even more amazing neighbors. (lets just say I am not letting myself think about leaving the neighborhood or it puts me in tears because we have been SO blessed to have lived here)

Its not all about getting out of debt. Its the freedom that we will have as we are working on this. Matt will be doing online course work during this time to get a degree through Indiana Wesleyan. We will be freeing up a lot of time for him to focus on school and also more time for us to enjoy our family, plus getting out of debt!

I am planning on posting more on the progress as we move along the journey, living minimlstly and sharing what God teaches us along the way.