In the Beginning....continued

After my mental wrestling match the night before, I woke up a little confused and a lot tired and completely ready to do whatever had to be done.

And for whatever reason my first instinct was to start looking at new houses. And the very first house I pulled up was the most darling, tiny little farmhouse in a city about 20 minutes away from us. With a farmhouse sink and a chicken coop and beautiful rustic wood floors. It was half the size of our current house with twice the land. I felt like my heart might just burst at the sight and thought of that house. Because it looked like a real home.

To preface, we had bought our first home only 2 1/5 years before this. We got an amazing deal on a foreclosure and had a lovely, large, new home in a great neighborhood with a pool and nice neighbors and we had essentially felt very comfortable there. We always said it was our 8-10 year house. We had never even considered the thought of moving sooner than that. Why would we?

So I called my husband and had basically this conversation:

"I think we need to sell the house."

"Umm, what's going on?"

"I just really feel like we're supposed to live somewhere else....like in the country....like on a farm."

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah. I want chickens."

"What? Are you pregnant?"

A valid question of course, but the answer was no. And as we talked and I couldn't even begin to articulate why I was saying the random things I was saying, he lovingly asked if we could talk about it when he was home later that night.

So I spent my day researching what I was feeling. I love the internet. It always makes you feel a little less like a cuckoo bird.

What I found was that all my feelings were pointing me toward one concept: Minimalism.

That word is a verb and a noun and an adjective and can mean something different to everyone. What I took away from it was that it meant living a life with intention. Not just floating around wondering how you ended up in a certain place with certain people and a bunch of things. But making a choice to do everything in my life intentionally.

Here's my favorite definition from theminimalists.com:

"Minimalism is a tool that can assist you in finding freedom. Freedom from fear. Freedom from worry. Freedom from overwhelm. Freedom from guilt. Freedom from depression. Freedom from the trappings of the consumer culture we’ve built our lives around. Real freedom."

This hit me hard because it's not like I really felt trapped or imprisoned, but this idea of true and complete FREEDOM was speaking to my soul.

I think minimalism also means we have to take full responsibility for our lives. If we are living with eyes wide open and making very careful decisions, then we know that things aren't happening to us by mistake or happenstance or because of a lack of involvement in our own destiny. Not all the time, anyway. 

And I wanted that so desperately. I wanted to feel like my life was of my own very careful making. To wake up each day and choose to the best of my capability what I was going to fill it with.


And thus began our journey.

In the Beginning

Some changes in life happen so gradually you hardly realize it until the transformation is complete. Like turning 30 and looking back to when you were 20 and realizing you'd barely recognize that person anymore.
Or like when you put on your favorite jeans and suddenly they're too tight and you can't really blame just one specific cookie or one extra slice of pizza. 
Or the other day when I looked at my almost 5 year old and realized he's basically a grown up all of a sudden.
Most of the time, changes in our life sneak up on us. One day at a time. One small decision at a time. Until we choose to reflect and then suddenly see that somehow things are different. And that can be good different or bad different or just plain different.

The change that I realized had crept up on us a year ago was a not so great kind of different. And while it was gradual, I can pinpoint the exact moment that I finally opened my eyes to take in the full extent of the view I was now accustomed to.

One night in late March of 2015, when my husband was out of town, I lay in bed for hours just tossing and turning. I'm a paranoid maniac when my husband is gone anyway, but I knew this lack of sleep was different. I wasn't just hearing pretend, creepy noises that just had to be murderers. I couldn't stop thinking about everything in our life.

My mind was going a million miles a minute about all the crazy things: money, debt, schooling, futures, retirement, how we were raising our kids, our everyday life routine, etc etc etc and on and on. You know that feeling, right?

And of all the things I was troubling over, it was these three questions that came to my mind:

Are my children happy?
Is my husband happy?
Am I happy?

And as I answered each question in my mind, I had to say no. Not for any real reason. We were content. We were "fine". We were doing really great by a lot of standards

Yet in a moment of total and raw honesty with myself, I answered no. And then of course burst into tears. And then of course talked myself out of feeling that way.

I'm not sure what brought on my moment of transcendence that night, but I can safely say that from that moment forward I have not been the same. I started on a quest to find out why I felt that the very distinct answer was that NO, we were not happy. And even more importantly, what did I need to do to be able to answer YES and really mean it?