Update on 'Running away from the Rat Race'

So we dove into the house search last weekend and have made some good progress.  I believe we have the neighborhoods narrowed down so that we don't go chasing things that are beyond where we'd like to live.  Durham is and interesting and very unique town in that neighborhood is everything when finding a place to live.  You can't just say, the whole of such-and-such area is a great place to live because things change here in fairly short distances and you have to pay attention to what the particular neighborhood you're looking in is like.  We've also made significant progress on prepping the house to put on the market.  With family coming into town we had serious motivation to get more things done as well.  We had my parents for the weekend and will have my brothers and my niece & nephew joining us on Wednesday.  The plan for now is to have the house up soon after they all return to the glorious state of Minnesota.
Please, if you know someone looking to move to Durham and then need 3 bedrooms and 1600 sq ft, let us know.

Running away from the Rat Race

So we have decided to run away from the Rat Race. It has been building for a while but we recently crossed over and completely sold ourselves on the decisions we've wrestled with.

That decision mainly involves selling our house. It's a beautiful house, the nicest we've ever lived in and we like it a lot, but it's killing so much of who/what we want to be. In order to stay in this house long-term I would either have to start trying to climb ladders to reach more money or Rachel would have to stay in the workplace while we try to begin a family. Our feeling is that either of these things would continue to lead to the typical American life (as displayed in the comic) of never being happy and always needing more. We don't want that life, we want Rachel at home with the kids, we want a fruitful life of building the Kingdom of Jesus not just our kingdom, we don't want to run that meaningless race. And so we are choosing the life we want over the house we want.

This means we're going to try and find a much more affordable house, one that perhaps needs some work (as I am capable of a significant amount of home improvement due to my father teaching me), one that will help us in our pursuit of fostering community, making a difference in Durham and living less hectic lives. We aren't after some sort of pipe dream of a life with no stress, perfect harmony and sunny days. We realize the reality that life will never be easy and that this move won't change that. However we also realize that these changes will better center our lives on the things that matter like other people, our family, generosity and the gospel.

So hopefully the next several updates on the blog will be about the sale of our house, the locating of our new home, the move, the repairs, etc. :)