THE MOVING BLUES

Well, it looks like we will be moving again soon. This could be a long story but I will just take a few moments to get some stress off my chest.

When we moved to beautiful suburban Caledonia it was because I was supposed to start a job as president of a newly started foundation designed to support international church planting. The people who were funding it had approached me and asked if I would be interested in taking a break from pastoral ministry and run the new foundation. To be honest, I was ready for a break and the generous salary looked very nice as I considered ways to support my new wife and five new children.

The house we bought was actually rather modest for the salary I’d been promised. It had to be large to hold all eight of us. It has six bedrooms on three levels of living space. But, as you know, the foundation job didn’t happen. Suddenly, the modest home was rather extravagant for my church/restaurant wages.

We’ve been able, by God’s grace, to meet all our bills. However, we haven’t had enough to put into savings. Let me say this briefly, we live from week to week and are grateful for God’s generosity. So the lovely wife and I decided we didn’t want to live this way anymore. Son #2 will be a junior in college so he will probably only be home one more summer. Son #3 is seriously considering entering military service this summer. We could downsize.

Mia ran into a girlfriend in town a couple of weeks ago. As they chatted she discovered that the girlfriend is planning on building a new home and selling theirs. They have a lovely late-Victorian near the not-yet-gentrified-downtown area of Caledonia. The price on the house would allow us to cut our mortgage payments literally in half. At first we were just dreaming. Then we decided, “Why not? It’s a good move all around!” So we entered into discussions with these nice folks and things are moving along slowly.

Of course, we need to sell our house now. Our friend, the realtor, told us to strip down the furniture and “stuff” as much as possible to get it ready to show well. We rented a storage unit and started filling it up with non-essentials. Mia has attacked this task with gusto. The three daughters have joined in the fray and have helped a great deal. The house is a wreck right now with boxes packed up and waiting to be delivered to storage. We have now rented storage unit #2. Why do we have so much stuff?

Stress levels ran high all last week. I still had to keep my appointments and write a sermon for today. I thought I felt a heart attack coming on several times during the week. I really hate this. But the thought of freeing up so much in house payments is a strong motivator.

I’ll keep you posted. Thanks for stopping by!