Pursuing the simple life...

I want to give up.

That is my overwhelming feeling as I sit here and write this. I’ve been much better this week about finally admitting this to myself (and anyone else who will listen to me, especially my husband and our saint of a realtor, but more to come on that later).

Here we are, still in the very, very, nascent stages of pursing what Matt and I both believe down to the very core of our being is God’s call on our lives and already, I’ve had it.

Let me catch you up a bit, “had it with what?” Many of you might be asking. So let me back-up.

In 1984, both Matt and I were born. Okay, maybe not that far back, 9 years ago yesterday, Matt and I got married. From the time we were engaged and up until now, both of us have shared a strong faith in God and wanted to pursue HIS plan for our lives over our own. We believed that us getting married meant that He would then use us together, in more powerful ways than He could have used us apart. And even though the prayer of our hearts was to pursue HIS plan, we had a hard time discerning what that was. We said we’d be willing to do anything. Become missionaries in Africa. Go into full time ministry. Start a non-profit. All that we asked was that He make it crystal clear to us. Just say the word, Lord, and we will go.

But God’s answer to us didn’t come like a bolt of lightning. It wasn’t written in stone. So in absence of that clear “do this” direction, we pursued our lives, in the way that our cultural and society says is the logical order.

We got married. We survived the first few years of marriage, overcame lots of obstacle, made lots of wonderful memories, but ultimately grew into better versions of ourselves. We fought hard to make sure we were growing together, vs. apart and 9 years later we can both truly say that we are better today than we were then. We love each other more deeply, fully and completely than those naïve little 25 year olds could have ever imagined the day we said I do.

We bought a house and then we bought another house. We had two beautiful children and we learned what it really meant to love someone more than yourself.

We pursued our careers, we changed jobs, we celebrated successes and lamented when things didn’t go our way. We gained life skills and we gained confidence.

All the while feeling an underlying restlessness and waiting for what we thought would be a shout from God to say “now do this.”

But it didn’t come as a shout. Instead, it’s come for us as a quiet stirring, a gentle whisper that has grown loud enough that we have been spurred into action. It first came in the form of Blessing Trips, our deep desire to give struggling families the gift of a break. The chance to pause on whatever they are going through, enjoy some time with one another and then rally the strength to continue the fight. The vision here has been confirmed over and over and the first trip was an amazing success. Growing this has been a challenge this past year with roadblock after roadblock obtaining 5013c status, but the vision still remains. And since both Matt and I are in it for the long haul, we’ve kept steadily marching forward…

It’s come in the form of chaos in our lives, health and physical challenges associated with caring for two young children while both of us continue to work outside the home. The long days, late nights, endless runny noses, fevers and missed work (thankfully from just minor childhood illnesses!). The financial challenges, cost of daycare, medical bills and keeping up with the “wants” and “needs.” The struggle to meal plan, the endless laundry, how the lawn always seems to keep needing to be mowed, on and on. But all the while KNOWING and feeling how incredibly blessed we are and how we would give anything and everything to ensure we had one more day, month, year of this beautiful life.

The serious discussions that all of this has prompted and causing us to question whether there was more to life then the endless merry-go-round that we seem to be on.

The realization that we only get one life. This is it. There are no second chances.

And through all of this searching and praying and living, we have come to this moment. A moment where we feel like God has given us a His answer. He’s shown a flashlight on just enough of the treasure map of our lives where we can see how we’ve gotten here, where he wants to take us and at least the next couple of actions that we need to take to get there.

Our mission in life

Pursue a Simpler Life. That’s it. That’s what both Matt and I feel with every part of our being, that God wants us to do. What do we mean by that? Oh so many things and I’m sure I won’t elegantly articulate them all here but this whole post to-date has pretty much been a stream of consciousness so might as well continue that trend! Ha!

In a nutshell, it means focusing on what really matters and actively and continuously fighting hard to pursue all of the “right” things (those that God says will satisfy) vs. getting sucked back in (either by culture or our very nature) to chase after the “wrong” things (those that the world promises will satisfy but are in fact empty).

• Rejecting the cultural pull of “bigger, better, more” in exchange for “smaller, simpler, less”
• Creating family memories vs. buying more stuff
• Freeing up more of our resources (time and money) to provide hope, love and encouragement to others and point them to Jesus, the ultimate source of hope and encouragement

We don’t have all of this figured out yet, and we don’t know exactly what it will mean for us, but for now, a few things are clear:

We are making some changes. (Dipping our toe in the water, if you will...)

We are at the point of action, which brings me back to the beginning of this post. Both Matt and I feel strongly that a first step in the pursuit of a simpler life is to free up some additional time and money. Looking at our expenses, the two biggest financial obligations we have currently is our house and kids daycare. Both of which we really, really like and both is hard to imagine making a change in.

But as many of you have seen, we recently put our house on the market and are attempting to downsize to something smaller and less expensive. The hope is that a smaller space will not only help us simplify “stuff” but also lower our mortgage payment and free up cash for us to use differently.

Not going to lie though, this has been HARD. It flat out stinks trying to live with two young kids in a house that you’re showing. Houses that are smaller and less expensive aren’t as nice as ours (I mean clearly or they wouldn’t be less expensive!). The real estate market has dipped and is not nearly as hot as it was a couple of months ago, so it’s proving a lot harder than anticipated to sell our home and if we can get the price that we need to make this all worth it. There’s so much uncertainty over whether this is all going to work out and Matt and I have both questioned over and over and over again whether we are doing the right thing.

My heart longs to just throw the towel in and forget about this whole thing. Snuggle into our comfy, clean and safe home, put up some Fall decorations, stick my fingers in my ears and pretend like I don’t hear the whisper. Man, would that be easy to do…

But, I won’t. I will suck it up and keep going. And Matt, God bless him, will carry me along on days that I just can’t. We are in this together and together we will keep fighting.

And for heavens sake, this is selling a home and moving! A pretty minor trial in the scheme of things. Completely #firstworldproblems. We are blessed beyond blessed that this is the greatest struggle that we face right now and so many people struggle through so much worse.

But it doesn’t mean it isn’t hard. It doesn’t mean the tears of frustration aren’t real. So I will let myself feel the hard and let the tears fall when they come.

We plan to be transparent about the journey along the way. This is definitely more me than it is Matt, my social media averse husband. But with his (semi-reluctant) blessing, I’m starting this blog with the intent of sharing parts of our journey as we attempt to walk this path that we believe God is leading us on. The last thing I need though is another item on my “to-do list” so I have no expectations about frequency of posts. Maybe this will be my one and only post. Maybe it will be the first of hundreds. Who knows.

Maybe hearing our journey will inspire you, or maybe it will just help explain what “those crazy Leibrocks are thinking” or why we’ve had to cancel on obligations, show up late, or seem a bit more cranky than usual.

If you’ve made it this far, congratulations. This was a long one, but it’s honestly felt good to get so much of this into words. Thanks for listening. More to come.

The Leibrocks