Curveballs into Callings

I’ve mentioned curveballs on this blog before, right?

They seem to be good things to blog about, and blogging about them helps me see the good in them, difficult as they may be.

This past April, the love of my life threw me another one. He’s getting good at that—too good, I’d say. I love a little consistency, but I guess God knows I need adventure. So he put David in my life, because David seems to be good at curveballs. (Love you, honey!)

David’s curveball’s come with, usually, consequences. (His words, not mine.) The consequence this time was that he needed to sell his business. And that dominoed into the reality that we had to make a few choices: either keep our kids at a good school and a cute house we adore in the city, or move to a little community where we’ve been helping start a church for the past two years. Staying in the city meant education for our kids, a fully remodeled house, Whole Foods, nearby nail salons, but no church family, no dear friends. Moving to the country meant, among other things: snakes, bobcats, dirt roads, two hour trips to an organic grocery store, but a life rich in sidewalk conversations, meaningful talks about what God is doing in our lives, the freedom and vulnerability to be ourselves, and to honor the difficult moments in dear friends lives by allowing them to be themselves.

So we moved. David sold his business. We figured God likes to turn curveballs in to callings, and here we find ourselves.

I mentioned a while back—probably in my last post—that I had some goals. I wanted to start a little retail business, and wanted to relaunch my online course. But Curveball (let’s capitalize that, since apparently it’s going to be mentioned a bit) threw a wrench in that plan.

Then the thought entered our minds—what if David and I did something new TOGETHER? A marriage counselor told us one time, “Your goal in marriage is to MINIMIZE each others’ weaknesses and MAXIMIZE each others’ strengths.”

Cue the list of strengths and weaknesses, a project we’ve been working on for the past four months.

David is so good at several things. He can completely win at a a daily to-do list. He can pass tests like he wrote them. He’s a learner, open to feedback and making adjustments in life, even when it’s hard for him. Small talk is his game—he can win a room over in five minutes. Me, I’m the polar opposite. The daily task list is a STRUGGLE for me (hence the whole I-made-a-planner thing). I can’t pass a test to save my life. I’m lucky I got a drivers license—it wasn’t the driving part they were worried about, it was the question and answer part of driver’s ed. I can’t small talk to save my life. We both have a background in marketing. I love design, and have always wanted to do something with home or interiors. We both love to cook. David loves people, and I love people, too, as long as it’s ok for me to be the quiet one when I get tired.

So what were all these attributes pointing to?

We were not, and are not, in a hurry to fill up David’s newly found “free” time. We don’t want to rush into anything that might not be a true “calling”. But at the same time, we don’t want to whittle life away. We’d like to find a rhythm and routine for life, as we chart out into unknown homeschooling territory, and reorganize our days around an odd concept of being a “stay at home family”. What’s most important for us right now is that we’re leaning into the adventure that God promised would be our lives, and that we’re listening to His nudgings, and honoring Him with our efforts and desires and words and actions.

We don’t want to do EVERYTHING. We’ve brainstormed taco trucks, catering, interior design, staging houses, cpa or financial advisor, (which, given aforementioned vaguely described curveballs, makes me laugh).

But more than anything else, we’ve been open. We remain open. We want to live palms up, which is a term I got from this book, Love Does. Bob, the guy who wrote the book, says you can’t be defensive or angry if you turn your palms up—and that’s how David and I want to live life.

We want to be WISE about how we use our time, but we want it to be fun. We want it to bring God the glory, and help us love on our neighbors.

So here’s where we’ve landed. David got his real estate license a couple of weeks ago (back to that uncanny ability to pass any kind of test). We’re trying to sell our house in Edmond (if you’re looking, it’s super cute).

Aaaand…we’re starting a blog.

What?????

I know. It’s weird. We’re not the blogging family type. We don’t like pictures of our kids on the internet, and David has never been known to have any interest in developing a personal brand.

But we found something we’re passionate about, and we think it’s a really good thing. We think the world needs more of it. That thing is simply: community. People, relationships. Neighbors. And when you marry David’s strengths with mine: you have someone who is great at executing day-to-day details (which a blog requires), and someone who loves to think up new ideas (which a blog also needs). So we’re going to give this a shot.

Something else we’ve learned lately is that there are a multitude of seasons in life. Not literal spring, summer, fall seasons, but seasons of work or play, grief and joy, quiet and noise. Looking at life in seasons makes it bearable. As entrepreneurs, we’ve seen feast and famine, busy and slow, easy and hard. The only thing that’s guaranteed about the seasons is that they are seasons—they’ll fade into another season at some point, and that makes waiting out the hard seasons easier, and makes appreciating the good seasons richer.

So it’s probably a good thing to add that we know this blog is a for a season. That might mean one year, that might mean ten years. It might evolve into something else, it might stay exactly the way it is right now. What we know is that it is RIGHT NOW, and it’s our hearts and what we want to share with the world: this idea that community makes our lives richer, that we were designed to be in community with people and God, that there are good ways to do community and there are things that challenge and break the bonds of community; that people matter; and that when you design spaces to harbor people, instead of putting people into spaces that were designed to harbor cities, you get community.

This is a lot. I fully expect that I lost a few people in here. There are a lot of big ideas floating around in this post, and the place we’ll be fleshing them out is over at our new little home on the web: frontporchfamily.com Come see us over there!