If forced to make a decision about which to love more, your family or your house, which would you choose? Me too, family wins every time. In this post, I am going to explain why I made that decision. Plus, I will reveal my motivations behind it. This story has some emotionally heavy elements, but like every good story, it ends well.
Over the last couple of years, my family and I have changed the structure of how we do life together. This section in the story entails me to describe a little back story of debt and a huge house.
The back story is this: we downsized from a huge house and decided to become debt-free. I mean entirely debt-free. That means no car payments, no student loans, no credit card debt, and no mortgage. We were well on our way to being liberated from all financial debt before we found Dave Ramsey- the ultimate guru for debt-free living. He helped us fuel our strengths and gave us a reason to keep plugging through paying back the thousands of dollars that stole our financial freedom.
Throughout these years of working our way to becoming debt-free, my business was growing, and consequently, I convinced my husband we needed a bigger house. My dream house, if you will. If you know me at all, you know I have two children. Well, three if you include my flower business, The Bridal Garden. I always called it my third child. You can read more about my flower posts here. The pictures above show the front door and my girls playing in the backyard.
After a few years of living in this house, we decided to sell it. My heart split in two because I love this house so much. The next-door neighbors fit right into the dream house vision too. We shared family dinners, and our kids were always playing with each other. We even vacationed together. We lived in a perfectly cookie-cutter yard, right in a cul-de-sac, and delightful songbirds dotted the trees. Imagine Snow White singing outside the seven dwarfs house with a bird on her finger and a baby deer at her feet. This is what I had imagined my life to be like while living in this dream house. Life was exceptional. Except, under the surface, it was not ideal. It did not control us, but I had to work extra hours in my business to make sure the income met the payment.
This experience of selling and downsizing to a smaller home took a few years for us to recover. I mean, it was our decision to sell, yet somehow it was as if someone died. My Snow White dream had ceased to exist, and that was heartbreaking. This part of the story is the sad part, and yet it was liberating all at the same time. It freed us from debt and freed me from working 80 hours a week.
About the same time of moving to a smaller home, we began homeschooling our children. We were not happy with our current public school situation, and we went in search of a different answer. Homeschooling fell in our lap. It was a perfect fit. We loved it so much, so we decided to start a homeschooling t-shirt company.
I have a background in fine art and graphic design, so coming up with the ideas was easy. We named the business Retro Outfitters. Through the process of starting this business, I taught myself how to silkscreen from watching videos on YouTube. Because of these online lessons, I have decided one can learn everything but brain surgery from YouTube.
So when I tell you that we reinvented how we did life together, it was a dramatic change. Rather than chasing the American dream of a big house and working 80 hours a week, we downsized to a smaller home, started homeschooling, and completely rewrote how we spend our time together. Our days now are spent having lunch together, laughing over Cheetos and chocolate milk. Instead of sending my kids to school every morning at 6:00 am, we lounge in our pajamas with a cup of coffee in hand and eventually get started on school around 9:00 am. Gone is the structured routine of school, work, homework, and bedtime. Now we travel the United States exhibiting at homeschool conventions with our homeschooling t-shirt company. The pictures above were from a side trip we took to the Grand Canyon after we exhibited at the Arizona Homeschool Convention. The others are from Washington, D.C., after we exhibited at a convention in Virginia. We take our kids and their books on the road, and we see the country. Talk about liberating! Sure we had to sacrifice, but this crazy life we have is one we chose.
The next part of me reinventing my new life includes starting this blog, My Mayberry Lane. I wanted a space where I could create anything from flower arrangements to cooking, and from crafts to t-shirts. This blog is where I want to celebrate creating and celebrate loving myself just as God created me. This post and the entire blog is me redeeming my story.
This is me choosing to LOVE my family and myself above a house and a dream I thought I wanted.
Where I am at in my life today is an extremely vulnerable place to be. I may not have it all figured out, I may be learning something new every single day, but my story does not end here. I have come to LOVE this place of vulnerability and this place I can grow (hence why the shirt has the LOVE logo). Being vulnerable can be scary and intimidating. It can exhaust all of my energy, and it can even be debilitating. Instead of letting those circumstances win, I chose to honor that vulnerability and learn to LOVE it. I decided instead to find rest there because it is in that place of vulnerability that I found a connection with others like you!
If you follow Brene Brown, she explains vulnerability perfectly.
βVulnerability is not winning or losing; it’s having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome. Vulnerability is not weakness; it’s our greatest measure of courage.β She goes on further by saying: “Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change.”
My Mayberry Lane is where you get to follow along with me while I reinvent myself, hear my story, and decide what you LOVE in your own life. You can pick up your own LOVE shirt here. It is through this shirt that I can share the LOVE with you.
Leave a Reply