Week Three

1.15.13-1.21.13

Knowing this journey will likely have references to many of my lived years, I’ll officially start with the year 2013 when I was 35. At that time Ryan (my husband) and I were living in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and our children were 4, 6, and 8. Caleb, our youngest, was attending preschool and both Spencer and Audrey were in elementary school. Ryan was working at building an accounting and tax business during daylight hours and I was working full-time as a sales consultant in the evening hours. Our reality made it so Ryan and I barely saw each other, you know, we were ships passing in the night. The boys’ school hours were half-day allowing for some together time but I only saw Audrey for 1.5 hours, the time from when she arrived home from school until I left for work. Our family was in this life/work situation by our choosing, and while we appreciated parts of what it held (some flexibility) we knew our family wasn’t thriving and it wasn’t sustainable.

When Ryan and I would have conversations with the hope of discovering and agreeing on a new way to be able to ‘do it all’ we typically came away from that time more frustrated and each of us subconsciously (or not so subconsciously) feeling trapped to “just keep doing life this way.” We desired to live our days honoring each other and those around us versus honoring the stuff needed to live. Most importantly, we were desiring our thoughts, hopes and commitments to be lived out honoring first… our love of Jesus.

to be continued…