For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

I'm certainly gaining a lot of insight and encouragement. Over the weekend, Steve & I conducted a little leisurely research for our trip. He mostly looked into RV's and operations, I focused more on the preparations and homeschooling aspect. To my delightful surprise, I found an awesome website geared specifically towards families that are full-timers. Now with a wealth of information and support at my fingertips, I realize the timing could not be anything short of the Lord's good timing!

Steve has been under an extreme amount of stress lately. The mortgage business as he's known it is a thing of the past. Four or five years ago, there was a sense of service to his community as he helped people buy their first home. But as the economy and government has changed the face of the mortgage industry, I don't think he sees or feels that same sense of purpose anymore. As he so eloquently put it, [he] "gets up, goes to work, busts his butt, comes home, stresses about bills, goes to bed...just to get up and do it all over again." All the meanwhile, never feeling that purpose and knowing there's probably no such thing as retirement.

Nearing the end of his rope, Steve has decided to push our trip up a few months -- as in, about 6 months. He is now aiming for us leaving right after Thanksgiving sometime. Truthfully, I could not be more excited. I think about all the possibilities this journey has in store, and I just know the next 3 months are going to feel like an eternity. Then I start the preparations!

I spent an enormous amount of time decluttering yesterday and I finally had my "Ah-Ha" moment. Part of the process of preparing for this trip is sorting through every item we own and scrutinizing it's value and worth. Do I love it? Will I need it? Will I have a place to put it in the RV? Will I even miss it if I just get rid of it now? Is it worth more as a possession, or is it more valuable to sell it and have the money for the RV? It has certainly turned into a project of self-discovery. I am realizing with each box I fill, with each room I declutter, that much of what we possess has little or no real value at the end of the day. It's just stuff.

I told Steve at lunch today that it amazes me what we as a society have come to. We pay hundreds & thousands of dollars to insure and protect our "stuff" -- fire insurance, home security systems, locked storage units. But at the end of the day, we've spent more money protecting those things than what they are actually worth. And for what? Ninety percent of that "stuff", we don't even need.

God has opened my eyes today. I finally see, first hand, what Christ meant in Matthew 6:19-20, "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal."

Christ was all about relationships and servitude and I see now that by ridding myself of earthly treasures, I am simultaneously making room for heavenly treasures; the treasure of family relationships and the opportunity to go out into the world and be of service to people and in places I would have never ventured to in the comforts of my little suburban world.