Monday, January 23, 2012

Thinking About The Future

Of course, none of us knows what the future holds, and nobody knows that better than a Christian! Personally I'm just waiting for the day of Christ's return, or for the day He takes me home...but in the meantime, I've got to do His work here wherever and whenever I can.

So we've been thinking about retirement. Pete doesn't retire for another 4 years (if there will be a retirement at all for those of us who will be depending on social security), but we've been talking about what we will do, where we will go, how we will minister after that. And until recently we had wanted to move to Marquette, Michigan for a variety of reasons. We both love Marquette, but are now thinking that maybe living there full-time may not be the best thing for us anymore.

Several months ago we started discussing the possibility of fulltime RVing. We had brought it up many times in conversation over the years, but never seriously considered it. Now, however, it really is seeming more like a calling than a dream. So I started researching it, and the more we learned and talked about it, the more it felt like the right fit in our hearts for our future.

We're not sure where all this is going, but we know we want to be free to go where we are called to go, we've learned how economical RV living can be, how many ways there are to do it, and most of all that it really IS feasible!

By the time Pete retires, the number of our pets will have naturally declined to a manageable quantity, and we will have this goal in mind as time goes on and we are tempted to rescue more, since there will be space and cost considerations as well as time (especially for the parrots) and energy to devote. We will also use these next few years to lighten our load. We don't have a LOT of "stuff", living in <1000 sq ft mobile home, but we have too much. We will need to pare that down to only enough for immediate needs, and nothing more. For example we won't need service for 16, a houseful of knick-knacks, tools for every possible situation, dozens of clothes for each and every season and situation, 7 rooms of furniture, etc.

There is something very liberating even in the planning and working toward such a goal. And it is an exciting prospect to be knowing we'll have unencumbered ourselves to the point that "Where He leads me, I will follow" can be a reality!

So that's where we're headed now, with this goal in mind, to hopefully someday be our new lives!