And We're Off!!

July 29, 2014

There is nothing left to pack, nothing left to plan. The moment we have long anticipated as a family has finally come.  The only thing left to take with us are memories of home. All that is left is a house, a shell, but it is no longer our home. We have spoken our farewells and now move on to our new life on the road. Charlotte will always hold a special place in our hearts. The last four and a half years living here has paved the way for taking this trip. Our family has grown so much over that time and it feels like everything we have experienced while living here has led us up to this moment—the trip of a lifetime.  

 

This past week the four of us enjoyed our last few walks down our peaceful, country road, soaking in the green pastures and even saying goodbye to our neighbor’s donkey, Cletus, who runs up to us every time he sees us.

We savored the last few bites at our favorite eateries. First stop was Chico’s Mexican restaurant.

The food has always been good but this time it wasn’t even about the food. Chico’s was somewhere we had been going for the past four years, it was a piece of home.  Our son, Tyler, went and spent a couple of nights with one of his best friends the last weekend. Then the very last night we went to Mama’s Pizza and ordered our favorite pizza, Grandma’s Pie.

All these familiar things would soon be gone and every single day of our new life would be different. We said goodbye to friends, hoping they would be more like “see you laters” than “goodbyes.”

Then came the hardest one for me, our last time at Mecklenburg Community Church. Meck, as everyone calls it, has been more than a church home to our family. This was the place we rediscovered the important things in life and rearranged our priorities. I found it hard to imagine not walking through the doors each weekend. Sure, we would watch Meck from the road, but with this thought brought a realization that life was really about to change.

There is no sugar coating it, even chasing your dreams isn’t all smiles. All you can do is soak up every moment in life with gratitude and reflect on the memories. These memories will be with us forever.

 

That being said, putting aside the familiarity and moving to the unknown is an absolutely astounding feeling. While packing up our cats, dog and kids and knowing that today was the day we were “really doing this thing” well, there is no real way to describe the feeling, it is surreal. As we were driving down the highway anticipating our first “new home” I would turn to Tom and just say….”we are really doing this!”  All with a sense of excitement for what lies ahead, and sense of nervousness for all the unknown, and a sense of sorrow for what we are leaving behind.  Bittersweet, I suppose. 

 

But here we go, all the preparations have led us to this very moment.  Years of planning, weeks of de-cluttering, all the sacrifice, and all the anticipation.  The moment was finally happening. It is a rather odd feeling driving down the road knowing that every single thing you own is following in the trailer behind you.  A sense of liberation surrounds you and with it a feeling that anything in life is possible. Even with the range of emotions as we left, soon came an unbelievable feeling of peace.

Of course, we had to have a bump in the road the very first trip. Originally we were scheduled to leave by 8am…and a little after noon we pulled out of the driveway. We have learned that time is no longer a factor and there is no such thing as a real schedule. Simply put, things aren’t going to go as designed, that would be too easy. We were two minutes away from our first stop in the very remote north Georgia mountains when GPS told us to turn. We did turn. When you make a turn on a mountain road with a 28 foot trailer, you are committed. We looked back only to see that the turn we should have made was straight into the campground and here we were headed up the mountain, away from our campground, winding around some of the largest drops I’ve ever seen. Dog whining, kid’s anxious, parents trying to stay calm and find an easy solution. Nothing comes too easy for this family. My husband, being the expert driver he is, pulled in to a small gravel road and did a full turn around backing up that bad mamma-jamma trailer, as I stood in the middle of the road keeping an eye on traffic at each curve. I have a feeling moments like this might come more often than we would like, but these same moments might also be some of the biggest memory-makers. We soon arrived safely at our destination that took our breath away. It was a hidden a gem tucked away in the foothills of the mountains. Our anxiousness melted away as we drove up to our new home for the week.

I’m not sure when this new way of life will feel real. It all still feels like a dream that isn’t really happening. I guess that is exactly what it is, a dream, one that we followed and one that has unfolded before us. We didn’t just talk about it. We did it. The four of us, our dog and our two cats have hit the road and this life of adventure has only begun.