Yvonne and I set out January 22, 2023, for a clockwise sabbatical journey around the U.S. and Canada in a 16’ A-Liner Classic camper. The great surprise to me was the very deep need I had for rest and restoration. Beauty and solitude were powerful medications. But even those medications require time. Lots of time. Four months later, I was still being restored.
By May, however, we started to move into Reset. Our life became more sprinkled with “What’s next?” It was a question which we journaled, conversed and prayed about. I had sensed in the previous year that there was a new chapter, actually a new volume, that would be soon unfolding. All previous commitments seemed to be heading to a simultaneous conclusion, and the future seemed surprisingly optional. I had never experienced that in life, so achieving clarity on next steps became paramount.
Looking back, there were some milestone moments. One was on my sister’s deck, bordered by bird feeders, on Whidbey Island, WA, the farthest geographical point from our home. My sister, Diane, was asking good, penetrating questions to help us clarify our “next” when Yvonne suddenly interrupted with, “Wait! Stop! That’s it!!” The immediacy and force of her exclamation took us back. Yvonne was simply trying to crystalize what had suddenly become glaring to her. She lived within an hour of eight wonderful grandchildren. To miss the opportunity to invest in them “while they still wanted to be around Mimi” was to miss big.
My “next” was not so dramatic, but there had been a growing conviction to be writing.
Both of these “nexts” would require a change of location. For Yvonne, to be nearer to the majority of her grandchildren. For me, a place of solitude and beauty. That would mean selling our home of thirty years with its memories and the best neighbors one could hope for, and moving a distance from our faith community of the past 42 years.
But having received clarity, we now both felt motivated to return and get things in motion. So we traveled at a quicker pace across the stunning Canadian landscape to arrive back in Maryland in July instead of October, and set to work immediately. Our goal was to sell first, to have cash to leverage when it came to purchasing in that competitive market.
Those who have been ‘settled’ for thirty years know what it takes to prep and move — one of the downsides of living in prosperity. We were at it round the clock, while searching for homes near our children. The prospects were discouraging. The shifts caused by COVID-19 and an expansion of telecommuting meant the areas we were looking at had risen in price dramatically. Moreover, the probability of finding a place both close to family and possessing solitude/beauty seemed a pipe dream.
Our sale went well, realizing our hoped for price in a very short window. We had been on the road for six months. Now we were about to be even more nomadic — our past sold, our future uncertain. What if we had heard wrong? No turning back now. We took the next steps forward.
And then a week before closing, we came upon a house that seemed too good to be true: 10–12 minutes from most of our family, scenic with solitude, and in the same price range as our house sale! But what are the odds of making the winning bid with limited funds in a competitive market?
That story is worthy of a separate post.