Life changes.  Life changes even more quickly and more dramatically when we push those changes along ourselves, doing something different that puts us in new situations that demand that we act and react in different ways.  Terry and I have done this by quitting our old jobs and moving out here to the Grand Canyon, taking jobs that are very different from the ones that we had before.  Instead of teaching and advising at a college now, I'm working at the front desk of a hotel.  Instead of working as a travel agent, Terry's working at the Transportation desk, helping people to plan their stays and to check in and prepare for the mule rides down into the Canyon.

Much more has changed other than just the jobs, and both of us are enjoying the changes.  Both of us work schedules that aren't at all regular, and we both work a lot of evenings, from 1-9:30 or noon-8, for example.  We love these shifts, as both of us are morning people, and we get an awful lot of fun stuff done in the mornings before we have to go to work.  When I wake up at five, I have a whole eight hours to work on the website, write, go running, go for a cup of coffee, and whatever else I want or need to do.  I can go for nice walks along the rim, or even hike down a ways into the Canyon.  I have plenty of time.  For Terry, it's the same way.

We both find that our wants are diminishing as our needs are minimized.  When we used to go into a store, we used to find tons of stuff that we didn't really need, but that would look cool in our house or that would be nice to have.  Right now we're living in a two-room motorhome, so we don't have a whole lot of room for decorating or even for storing things such as groceries.  Our needs are dramatically fewer, and we're enjoying that fact.

And speaking of walking, we're both doing tons of it.  If the weather's bad (which is rare), we can take the free shuttles to and from work, but for the most part we both prefer to walk through the Ponderosa pine forest whenever we can.  It's about a 25-minute walk, and the smells and sights of the forest, the elk, the deer, the trees, and the birds are extremely invigorating.  The air is fresh and the sky is usually clear, a fact that makes the night sky an amazing experience--because there aren't many lights here at all, more stars are visible than you'll see almost anywhere else, and they're a stunning reminder of just how small this planet of ours is.  We both feel much fitter than we have in a long time, and that's even with all the running that I've done over the last couple of years.  Both of us are finding that we're craving sweets less now than we have in a while, and we're eating well.

Life here isn't without its problems.  The sale of our house just fell through, as the buyers backed out citing some very invalid reasons (e.g., they claim the water heater is broken and needs replacement, when it's simply turned off at the circuit breaker).  It looks like they got cold feet, but that kept the house off the market for over a month.  So we're still stuck with the house and the mortgage payment and the property taxes and insurance, even though our incomes are significantly lower than they were a few months ago.  We're looking at the situation as a kind of test of faith--not God testing us, per se, just a chance for us to keep our faith in life and God--and we're trying to keep in mind that all things work out for the best in the end.

In case I've given anyone the impression that all is milk and honey with our move, I suppose it's only fair to give the other side of the story:  the problems that have surfaced that are testing our faith and keeping us on edge to a certain extent.  The major one--and the one from which the other problems are emanating--is the house that we still own in Keene.  We put it on the market in mid-April, almost exactly when the downturn in the housing market began.  Instead of selling the house quickly and actually making a bit of a profit, we still own the house, since the buyers who were supposed to close two weeks ago backed out just a week before closing.  They knew we needed to sell, so they waited until almost closing until they demanded that we drop the price another $10,000 or they wouldn't buy.  It was an incredibly manipulative, cold-blooded thing to do, and we'd rather face more financial setbacks than submit to that kind of thing, so we refused to sell at their demanded price.

So we're still paying mortgage and property tax and water and electricity for a house that's standing empty.  We can't rent it out because we don't want to sell it out from under anyone.  We just had to liquidate all of the savings/retirement accounts I had built up over the last few years so that we don't start missing payments in other areas.

The ironic thing is that when we started planning for this change in our lives, everything else fell into place so quickly and so well.  We're both a bit perplexed at what's going on with the house, but there's really nothing we can do except trust God and life and our real estate agent to take care of the situation.

Likewise, our van hasn't sold yet, either.  It's a six-year-old van with only 58k miles on it, and we're asking $2000 under the NADA value, yet there have been no takers for it.  We don't know why, but we're still stuck with the payments.

So instead of being debt-free and living off our new salaries, which are substantially lower than we were earning before, for the time being our resources are being completely drained.

We don't see this as a test of our faith--we see this as an opportunity to practice faith.  Life isn't trying to hurt us, and in every seeming problem are the seeds of something much better in store for us.  We can't see the bigger plan, so we're not going to lose sleep over financial worries.  We simply don't have those worries:  we trust that eventually we'll see the reasons behind these supposed problems.  Perhaps the people who need to buy our house haven't started looking yet.  Perhaps in some way we're meant to keep the house.  We can't know what's going on, but we can keep in mind that what's supposed to happen, will happen, and will be the best for us in the long run, if not necessarily in the short-term world.

When you live from your heart and you take risks, you have to be willing to accept the results of those risks.  We went into this fully aware of this fact, so we're not going to complain a bit just because a few things aren't going the way we'd like them to go.  We're learning from the problems as well as the positive aspects of where we are and what we're doing, so we're going to keep our thoughts positive and try to let the lessons help us to become better--wiser--people.

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