We Are Living Our Dream

Yesterday our daughter told me of a young couple we know planning to take another step in their life to allow both of them to work from home. It involves a move from their current home to a new one in another state. Wow. My first thought was surprise at their intended move. Their extended family is close and currently split between 2 states with parents in-between. Adding a 3rd some distance away could be challenging. Then my daughter said, “I think they plan for that to be their “home-base” but will travel quite a bit for their business.” Hmmm, that makes more sense to me considering there is already one sibling in their family doing exactly the same thing. (different business) It made me smile. Good for them. They have set their priorities and are working to live them out. How many of us let  people’s expectations of us or fear of the unknown keep us in conventional situations?

Then my smile got bigger because I realized we are living our life that way. From the outside looking in I’m sure no one even realizes what we are doing but we are living our dream. We are enjoying our kids and extended family. We are sharing our love of God and love of people by focusing on our passions and challenging others to do the same for the glory of God. We do this by being “tentmakers”. That’s a Biblical term. It means we make our own living so we can do what we really want to do without depending on it to live. In our case I job share a clinic nursing job and Mark runs his own business. That pays our living expenses. In and around that work we encourage and challenge others to live out their faith in their every day lives. Too many Christians live their lives with their faith in their back pocket for emergency purposes only. Some people don’t believe their particular passion is worth sharing. Sad, really sad. Everyone is a Treasure to God and we were all created with a purpose. We need to treasure each other. How different would our world be if we truly treasured each other’s uniqueness?

I’m writing this to publicly acknowledge how grateful I am for our life. I’m also writing this to encourage you to take a look at your life and appreciate all that you have or make a decision to change if something needs changed. It’s worth the hassle and yes, there are hassles. There will always be hassles no matter what you do. So don’t let the potential hassles stop you. What is stopping you from living the life you really want to live? If you are fortunate enough to already be living the life you really want won’t you share your story to encourage others to do the same?