Living Unfinished

About 1 year ago we moved into our new home. We spent a very fast month listing and selling our house, unexpectedly. That being said we threw the breaks on the rest of whatever we had planned for our life and transitioned to transitioning. Previous to the unexpected change we were already in the middle of another season of transition in the area of homeschool and career changes.

Backing up, 3 years ago Brett came home from work and said, “I feel really strongly that I am supposed to come home and homeschool the kids.” I quickly responded with, “What am I supposed to do?” Long story short I realized the Lord was opening a door for me to work in real estate. Because of this new career we were in the know about all different kinds of real estate. A building downtown caught our attention and we put in an offer. That was crazy and is a story for another day.

The busyness we experienced that month had partly to do with the fact that we not only needed to move, but we needed to complete several projects in the house before we handed over the keys to the new owner. I mused as I tackled my check list, that it seemed that we always lived in construction. Every home that we have ever owned had one project or another that was in process. I dreamt of one day when I would live in a house that was completely done.

The time came for the moving day hustle and now began the phase of settling into our new home. The building we bought was fully livable when we moved in, but lacked any place for storage. Plus we were met with the challenge of getting our family of 8 to fit into 3 beds 1 bath and 1400 square feet, and make it feel like everyone had their own space.

After several trips to IKEA we started to piece everything together. From lofted beds, wardrobes, bookshelves, and kitchen cabinets. After a month of working on these projects our family met its limits. We desperately needed to put aside the list of projects and start living a routine life. The kids needed structure. I needed structure! Together, Brett and I decided to leave projects to the evenings and the weekends. Intentionally getting back to our lives; homeschooling, activities, and business maintenance.It was great to get a jump on the home projects, but it was time to stop putting our lives on hold for the sake of getting projects done. The most beneficial thing we could do is put our normal day to day life into gear.

After we made the shift, I thought about how unfinished we truly all are. We are all in process, we are all still growing, learning, becoming who we were created to become. Living unfinished isn’t bad. It gives time and space to truly find out what we need instead of just what we want. Some of those trips to IKEA were trips to return items that we came to realize weren’t going to be a good fit for our family in the long run. Others times the trips were for the sake of pivoting to what was available, because we needed the item now and couldn’t wait for the items we thought we wanted.

We are still working on projects in our new place, still pivoting in order to make things work, but those projects will always take 2nd place to living our lives with the people we love.

We might be living life unfinished, but at least we are living.