As long as I can remember, I have always been drawn to exploration.  In my small neighborhood growing up, I was always leaving home and finding a cool fort, cave, or “secret hideouts.”  I looked for fossils and arrowheads hours at a time with my sister.  I felt freedom and independence at each new discovery.  Those were the days…

I say that because things began to change.  Life moved faster and you had to keep up.  It was an exhausting treadmill that I have been waiting to have the courage to escape from for a time.

We were living the suburban lifestyle in Frisco, TX.  We had the dearest friends of our lives, a church we treasure, amazing neighbors, great sports teams, and a supportive schooling community.  I also happened to be living in my dream house, a 1905 Victorian in downtown historic Frisco.  Life was grand!

And yet something was restless within us.  My husband had a knee surgery that included a series of unfortunate events that kept him in bed for months.  During that time, we sensed God beckoning us to be still and listen.  Our lives had become so busy and full that we had no breathing room.  We had somehow come to acquaint our “busy” to mean important and we were somehow integral to life going on.  It was pride.

We began to dream of something different.  We decided to get rid of our stuff, sell/rent our house, buy an RV, and hit the road with our 4 kids.  We called it our “family sabbatical.”

And what I have found so far reminds me of a quote I read from EB White describing a move he made in his life

“…changing his fortune according to fortune, whim, and need.  And in every place he abandons, he leaves something vital, it seems to me, and starts his new life somewhat less encrusted, like a lobster that has shed its skin, and is for a time soft and vulnerable.”  E.B. White

And we find ourselves “soft and vulnerable” and a bit “unencrusted” as we look and listen for what God would have for our family.