Right here. Right now.

We've been here for 8 days now and there have been so many good things and so much adjustment at the same time. When you're tired and weary from weeks on the go and a big move-in and are struggling to get a good night's sleep, it's really easy to focus on the hard parts, to not absorb the good around you, even when the good is sooooo good. 

It has been a pretty quiet week actually. There are two "wings", or atriums as they're called here, that go off from the common house in this place, and we have about 10 or so units in our atrium. Of these 10, there are a number of people who are either out of town or ones who keep to themselves for different reasons. There are some, however, who are around and who we've met and chatted with. We've sat out in a little nook filled with cozy chairs and sofas in the common space just outside our unit in the evening and had neighbours come and join us, chatting late into the night (whispering when the quiet hour arrived). We've propped our door open and had people poke their heads in to say hi, give us bits of info, ask us how we're doing. We've seen our girls run off into the common house with other kids (or in search of other kids) and not seen them for long periods of time, knowing they're safe (the building is locked) and having loads of fun with their new friends (and possibly getting into mischief with said new friends....hmmm). We've had good moments.

There have also been hard ones. I'm trying to recuperate from the move and the stress it has put on my body and for the past few days have been experiencing low blood pressure and faintness. I hope to see this pass as I get more sleep and gain more of a sense of normal. We've both had times of needing to close the door and the blinds and shut ourselves into our cave, trying to gain a sense of it being a safe hiding place when we're feeling "homesick" for our city by the sea, or our friends back where we came from, or from the overwhelm of a huge change. I've escaped to my bedroom which feels like a gentle and peaceful sanctuary on the upper floor, away from the door and the people outside, away from the noise and the overwhelm. 

There are gifts though. We are seeing them already. This God we have been following is already doing such good. We see His presence in the people who care so well for each other, and now for us. We see His presence in the small things like the way that I feel when I walk into my room - that it's a safe haven - that I feel that He is there and comforting. We see Him in the gift this community is. We see Him in the UTTERLY RANDOM way that Pito happened to meet a little boy on her walkie talkie the other day, who lives in the next subdivision, who happens to also be 6, who happens to homeschool, who happens to go to church in the area, who happened to drive by with his family today while we waited outside for them, in the pouring rain, just to wave and meet this new family that may very well become friends. We see God everywhere. In the rain and the peace that I felt as I walked to the compost this afternoon. In the tangible taste of Him I sense on my early morning walks. In the music Ryan and I play and sing in the evenings. He is here and He is good, and He has brought us here. May he have much good work for us to do.

Tonight there was a "welcome feast" for us and some other new people in the community. It was a potluck and everyone was to bring something except us newbies. :) We were SO well fed! Wow! And so many people came out! It was a gift to be able to see so many in one place, to chat with new friends and to witness our new community in action. What lovely, warm, welcoming and caring people! Really! This is what they DO. They care for one another. They live in community because they don't want to be alone and isolated. They want to know their neighbours. Co-housing is revolutionary and completely ordinary all at once. In our culture, we can so easily be isolated in our homes. We drive into our garages and can choose whether or not to engage with those around us, and how much to invite them into our lives. Townhouse complexes have the potential for more connection simply because there are shared walls, but even then, garages hide the people so often. Everything is set up to be private and isolated. Co-housing, in this sense, is really wild! I mean, to live in a building that deliberately doesn't have garages, where you need to enter your unit by passing through the common space where your neighbours are often around; it stands in contrast. (There's a joke we keep hearing that it takes an hour to take your garbage out here....because you meet so many neighbours along the way!) At the same time, I feel that co-housing is really not that strange or different. It's kind of like a townhouse complex, but we've put a glass roof over the "street" between the units, and the "clubhouse" happens to be attached to the "street". I don't know, there's something pretty....normal about seeing and knowing our neighbours.

I should be clear here too, that isolation is a lifestyle choice. Yes, many homes are set up in a way that encourages it, encourages constant privacy, isolation, living independent from the people around you, but even in that environment one can choose to build community around them. That is what we did back in our city by the sea. Remember our next door neighbours? We miss them dreadfully! I wish we could transplant them to this place, add them to the community, keep them close. My sister and her family are another example of living against the isolation factor. They know their neighbours. They get into their neighbour's lives. They share time and coffee and meals and conversations with them. 

But back to this place. I bet you'd like to see what it actually looks like, eh? Yeah? Wanna? Okay, here you go. xoxo Until next time.

 The South Atrium, where we live. This is a picture of the "street" between the units, covered in glass so as to allow daylight to enter, but not precipitation! At the very end are the glass doors into the common house.

The view from the atrium into our front window.

Our front door!

Our new home! That door goes out into the atrium.

 Looking in from the back deck.

 Our bedroom sanctuary. See what I mean? Peaceful. I just want to climb into bed and...zzzzzzz.

 Hard at work making pizza dough, with little Pony peeking over the edge of the counter.

From the kitchen sink, looking out to the atrium. 

 This was posted for a day or two before the welcome dinner.

The common house, taken from the front doors. 

The common house dining room. 

A nice place in the common house to sit and play piano late at night. 

(I just tested it out. Yup, it's nice.)

A New World

It has been five days since we moved in to this co-housing community. I can't tell if it feels like a year or an hour. It's been great in some ways, overwhelming in others, utterly shaking in some and inspiring in others. In short, we are feeling a lot of emotions!

It often seems to turn out, fortunately, that Ryan and I have our panic moments at different times. The days leading up to our move-in were tough for Ryan. He was second guessing our decisions, was worried about this co-housing community, wasn't sure it was a good move. Anxiety was pulling at him, bringing him back to the basic arguments against our big changes that we had to fight through early on. 

Then we moved in, and he relaxed. No, he got excited. He started saying, "I want to meet people!" and "I want to get out there and get involved!" Cue my turn for panic.

So I started strong. I was excited to move in. Those days of Ryan's heightened anxiety were a wonderful reprieve for me from nearly three weeks of feeling low and disconnected from our vision, from God, from really anything at all. I was weary from packing and moving out; I was missing our neighbours; I was worrying that we wouldn't see our good friends who we were moving away from as often as I hoped; I was sad about the loss of our next door neighbours (who we dropped in on a good number of times after we left!); and I was not handling "homelessness" very well. 

I felt particularly ashamed of that last one. I am indeed a rich westerner who has been privileged enough to never have been homeless in her life. It made me think of those who don't have a home, or a permanent home, or who are forced out of their homes. Not easy for them. And it was not easy for me.

Another stark and shameful realization for me: the fact that I REALLY MISSED MY COMPUTER. Seriously. I felt disjointed and un-collected. I felt like my grounding computer that had all the information I needed on it was no longer at my disposal and I was just flailing around without all that I needed. It's so weird. What the heck? Aren't I the one who's always talking about cutting back, NAY, cutting off technology? I know I go too far to the extreme sometimes, but honestly, it was shocking how hard it was to be away from the computer. 

Okay, but on Tuesday we moved in, people in the community dropped in here and there, we met some kids and our girls were as happy as pie running amok with them all, with this unexpected freedom of having the run of the entire building and property! Honestly! I thought we were meaning to DOWNSIZE, but this has just added such a huge dimension to our living space, and particularly to the girls' play space!

But of course, I started panicking. Yep, as Ryan relaxed and got excited, I took my turn. Worries. Homesickness. Exhaustion. It all caught up to me and I felt shaken for a few days. I would close the door into the community, lower the blinds, and take a deep breath. It felt good to hide in certain moments. It also felt good to open the door and walk down to check our mailbox, to be out, to say hello to those I passed by. Thankfully, I'm feeling better today. But you know what that means...Ryan's starting to feel shaken again.

Sigh! It's a wild time. It's a good, but wild time. Our place is almost unpacked. Ryan goes back to work in the morning. Life will take on a more regular pace for another week before we head off out of town again on holidays the following week. But I think we're going to like it here. I think it will be challenging and great. 

In the next post I'll give you all a bit of a tour and low-down on what things are like here! Woo hoo!!

Exodus

Ohmygoodness.

We have moved out! It has happened! We have left our beautiful home in the city by the sea and spent three long (LONG) weeks wandering around, waiting for the possession date at our new place in the co-housing community. 

I won't lie. This has been no easy task. Even with all the pre-purging we did, there was still a bunch of stuff to give away or throw out. For instance, our lawn mower. I mean, if we aren't going to have a grassy lawn, then why would we need one? We are certainly not interested in just keeping things around "just because". And so we sorted, and worked through the horridly full garage (9 boxes of girls' clothes I gave to the thrift store!!!), and packed and packed and packed. It was gratifying to experience packing up a house that had been well purged. We really didn't have LOADS of stuff, and hardly anything that wasn't used regularly or often. Woo hoo! Satisfying!

The girls went through many emotions. It has been a tricky thing to walk them through all this change, but all in all, they have really taken to it well. They are pretty happy kids and I feel like they trust that we have all our best interests at heart, not just ours as adults. They seem to feel safe even in the midst of the change, but that doesn't eliminate the occurrence of moody days, or fighting more, or regression in the potty training, depending on which girl we're talking about. These changes aren't always easy.

So after a little road trip, a week of RVing, and a handful of days at the inlaws' house between each of our temporary abodes, we are now lying in bed, nearly ready to turn out the lights and go to sleep, to wake in the morning and MOVE IN to our new, somewhat unusual, definitely exciting home! We are so ready, filled with nervousness and eagerness, which take turns churning our stomachs and never seem to quite leave us alone. 

What will it be like? We don't know yet! All our guesses are really just theory! 

Our challenge over the next few months will be learning how to really live out our values intentionally, however we see fit. The family time, the community building, the simple living, the living within our understanding of God's presence, the intentionality, they all need to continue to grow in us. It would be so easy to simply forget it all and embrace this move as just one more big change that will distract us from our antsy-panties, but we cannot. In a lot of ways it's a new beginning. 

And so, tomorrow it all starts, and continues. There are new beginnings every day. This is one, and we embrace it!

Life. Let's do this! (By Ryan)

Doing life on a day to day basis takes a lot of energy, time and thought. It doesn’t matter if you live on your own, if it’s you and a spouse, or if you have 3 kids like us. Life is busy and it often feels like there is no time or space to pause and take a few steps back and ask some basic questions.

Why am I doing this? Why I am living the way I am? How did I get to this place? Is this really what I want? Was this what I was aiming for? Where do I want to be in 5, 10, 20 years?

Before you know it, you have ended up somewhere you didn’t intend to be and you haven’t had the courage or ability to actually pursue the things you always said you wanted.

Living in the “head-down let’s just get through the day” mode also makes it really difficult when a decision or opportunity comes along because there is no frame of reference to make the decision. Let’s say you have a new job opportunity and you need to decide whether you should take it. The pay is better, the commute is longer, the job is working towards something you believe in. Do the benefits outweigh the long commute? 

Let’s say you are deciding if you should move. You can afford something bigger which will give you more space. It means more yard work, more of your finances towards the mortgage and maintenance of the house, and moving into an area that has less “community”. Does the increased space make the extra work worth it? Are you okay with having a larger mortgage? Does this mean that you have to sacrifice other things like family holidays, going out to eat? Is it worth it for that? Do you like to know your neighbours and share life with them?

None of these decisions are good or bad but they do have an impact on your entire life. They are not simply a decision about a job or a house. They are decisions that should reflect the things that we value but from what we have experienced in our own lives and see around us, our decisions don’t always reflect those values.

So what I am emphatically and forcefully telling you, YOU MUST DO, is think through and write out your values.  

What are the guiding principles that you want to shape your actions and decisions? Forget about what you feel you should value based on outside voices. Don’t worry about the way you are living your life right now. What values do you aspire your life to reflect?

For us, this process of determining our true values took some time. But in that time of weeding things out and grouping things together some themes emerged. And out of those themes, we chose our values - see this blog post.

Once you have determined your values, look at each area of your life and assess whether or not it reflects your stated values. Look at your living situation, your work, your finances, your relationships, the things you eat, the things you say, the things you watch, the way you spend your free time, the people you spend your time with, the community you live in, the places you vacation, the things you buy. Do these things reflect your stated values? 

Like it was for us, you may realize that parts of your life don’t. But the great thing is that you now have a framework to make decisions and move forward.

And when the next decision comes your way, you can look at your options based on your values rather than being distracted by the finer details. 

Life is a gift. 

Life is happening right now. 

And a life not lived intentionally will lead you to a place you never intended to go.

Grabbing Life by the Nards

This evening, I sat and joined in a discussion with a few people I know who have dealt with different feelings of grief, loss, and sickness. One person was a friend of mine who lost a baby boy days after his birth because of a abnormal chromosomal condition. Another was a man who had been diagnosed with cancer of the liver and was undergoing treatment. We spoke about grief, and recovery, and the shock of discovering that you're horribly sick, and the necessity of living with gratitude for each day that we're here on Earth.

It was a vulnerable, honest, and sobering conversation, and filled me with love for these two people who are experiencing such different difficult things, but who are facing it so courageously.

Another friend of ours has recently started chemo and is unabashedly pouring out his heart for all to read on Facebook - another courageous thing to do in the face of something so daunting. He recently posted a vine (if you haven't heard of Vine, you're missing out! Click here.) in which he took some time in nature. There was a simple shot of his hand touching a tree trunk. It was moving, to say the least, to see him drawing strength from this old, deeply rooted tree, this small piece of a vast creation.

These things leave me pondering. I'm a processor to the core. I listen, and I go away and ponder for a while, putting the pieces together in my mind and trying to make sense of what I've heard and what I think of it. The amazing thing about all three of these people is this.

They are living life in the raw, and in the now.

My friend spoke of needing to allow herself to pass through grief. She isn't living in the past, or trying to rush through or away from the pain. She lives today, and is learning to allow herself to feel what she feels.

The man spoke of being in a place of peace. In the midst of his body fighting against a slow growing cancer, he feels a deep calm and gratitude for each day as it comes and goes.

The third friend speaks of the love and care that he receives from those who pour out their support on his Facebook feed. He speaks of his experience changing each day, as some days he feels better than others, but that he's determined to deal with this thing and win.

I myself have never had cancer. I have never lost a child. I have never experienced the pain of divorce, or mental illness, or loss of a loved one. Sometimes I feel as though I've had an easy life.

But the thing is, from walking through these times alongside friends, witnessing and validating their pain and sorrow, and opening my heart to hear what I can from God in the moments of pondering, I glean a little bit of a gift from these people. I hear the messages that are being whispered through each situation. The messages aren't being whispered in only these difficult situations, but in every situation that I encounter.

Life is meant to be lived. Right now.

I mean, this is it, isn't it? And isn't it so easy to get caught up in what's going to happen tomorrow? Isn't it easy to dwell on the past?

I have to jog myself some days and shout out, "LAURA! THIS IS LIFE, RIGHT NOW! STOP IMAGINING WHAT YOU'LL DO WHEN YOU HAVE MORE TIME, OR MORE MONEY, OR WHEN THE KIDS ARE OLDER! THIS IS IT! DO THINGS RIGHT TODAY! ENJOY THE GIFT THAT IS TODAY! LIVE IN THE PEACE AND JOY OF THIS MOMENT!"

And so, in light of that, I'm going to post this, get up, leave the computer, and go sit with Ryan for the remainder of the evening. Then I'm going to go to sleep, and get up, and head out on an adventure with my little family for the weekend.

Have a wonderful, peaceful, in-the-moment kind of weekend.

Life Infused.

So.... we SOLD! Officially. It's done. It's complete.

It has been such a roller coaster. I'll be honest - I'm so tired of talking about it. I am not accustomed to living through so much constant drama. I don't like it. I don't like to complain about it. I don't like to be the one on the emotional roller coaster that never ends. I like to be chill, okay with things, go-with-the-flow. So this has been a challenge, and that part of our journey is over.

Breathe.

Shortly after we sold and finished all that up, our two older girls had their "theatre week". They have been a part of a homeschool theatre program since September and have been rehearsing "Willy Wonka Jr". The week after we sold was their week of dress rehearsals and performances, myself working backstage and realizing just how much work goes into a live musical theatre production! Whew! It went really well, and then theatre week was over.

Breathe.

Ryan and I had been talking about doing some counselling for a few years - a particular kind called "listening prayer" counselling. There was a highly recommended couple that offered this particular kind of counselling that we knew of and I had booked us in for a session a month or so before, not really knowing what to expect. It was really, really good. It was new and different, but so good to experience. We talked, and prayed, and I met a whole new character of God that I hadn't met before. Swept me right off my feet and left me reeling for days.

Breathe.

Then we noticed that our cat was acting a little unusual. She seemed to not be eating. She disappeared for a few days and then returned, still not touching her food or water. We tried different food. We observed her. Nothing. She grew weaker and tired. She wasn't young, but we expected her to last longer. Then one night she came up the back steps and meowed at the door in her usual way, but when I opened it, she fell over, meowing, too weak to walk any further. I picked her up, held her purring little body in my arms, and thus began the discussion of putting her down. She never really walked again after that. I carried her into our bed where she slept, and held her in my arms otherwise. She purred but didn't seem to be able to do much more. The next day, I took her in and went through the horrible and painful experience of holding her sweet head and paw as the vet put her down. I watched the light go out.

Breathe.

Then one day, after me worrying and worrying about a looming soccer game that our eldest had told me she WASN'T GOING TO GO TO even after she had started soccer and really really really really really really really really wanted to play, she ran into the house and hollered that our neighbour down the street played for the same organization, then proceeded to put on all her soccer garb, grab a ball, and dribble it around our front yard.

Breathe.

Then we got a request from a friend who was going out of town for a month to dog-sit her big loveable Weimaraner while she was gone. He was dropped off the day after our cat was put down and filled a huge void in my heart as he seemed to adopt me as his new foster-mom.

Breathe.

It's my birthday today. It was a glorious day. It was filled with phone calls from loved ones, facebook well wishes from friends and family, meals out, good conversations, walks in the sunshine, moments of excitement and inspiration, laughter and light.

Breathe deeply, and be thankful.

I am thankful. Life isn't always happy or smooth or easy, but it wouldn't be as rich if it were. The light shines so much brighter in the midst of the dark night, doesn't it? God is so good, and shows up in such amazingly dramatic ways in the midst of the hard parts of life.

Aaaaaand Breathe

Okay, I am not about to believe that our story has you on the edge of your seats, nor am I under the presumption that you'd all like a play-by-play, but since we had such a huge response to our last few posts, I thought it only fair to update you on the happenings around here.

But before I get to that, something of great importance must be addressed.

I am very aware that in the photo I posted of us drinking our Bailey's, some of you may have taken issue.  I realize that most of our readers are a little more on the conservative side of things, and so I just had to speak towards the specific issue at hand. My hair. I know. Really now. I took the picture and said to myself, "Wow, I really look like Kramer."

There is a good reason for this. One of which is my recent foray into allowing Ryan to get creative with my hair. In trying to save a little money, I said, "What the heck? Shave the sides!" and neglected to deal with the top, and what happens when I neglect the top? Well, it gets really thick and wild up top, leading to the Kramer look. 

So tonight I took some wee tiny nail scissors and did a little artistic sculpting of my own. I don't think I did too badly....

A little wild still, which I like, and yet a little less bushy and thick. And look how happy Ryan is! 

And now that we've dealt with the elephant in the room, we can get to the house stuff.

SOOOOO it's not as bad as it sounded when we first heard. We had a builder come through today and he laid out just what the problems were. There is no mould. There is rot, but it's not a whole lot and not something to panic about. We have a plan to deal with it and thanks to the lovely care of some good friends and family, are feeling very well loved in the process.

So, we forge on and take this thing by the bal....loony-pants, and sell this place!!

XOXO

Laura