We bought a house, and it’s on a lake! I have had so many emotions about this decision, even though we knew it was the right decision and the right time.
Backstory stuff
Here is a little backstory of our nomadic lifestyle (does anybody else hear the little lego guy imagining the “Wildstyle” lego girl say “backstory stuff” when you hear the word backstory? Maybe it’s just me) Anyway, my husband Matt and I, along with our 5 kids, moved into a 35 foot RV back in April of 2016. My husband resigned as pastor of our church and we embarked on the adventure of full-time evangelism as Kingdom Pursuit Ministries. We wanted to do it as a family, traveling together and so it seemed like getting an RV was the best way to do this. Not only has living in an RV been the most cost-effective way for us to travel, it has been, and still is, a great adventure!
We travel most of the time, and so far we have driven through 43 states and 4 Canadian provinces. Indiana is our home and we minister in Indiana churches about half of the year. My parent’s driveway, Matt’s brother’s giant propery, and other relatives have been very generous and gracious hosts to us over the past few years. No one ever complained, but we never wanted to wear out our welcome, we knew we wanted to eventually have our own homebase, to park the RV when in Indiana. We have always been looking, and pricing out properties, trying to decide what our homebase would be. It has been weird, because we didn’t really need a house, our house is on wheels, and is everything we need.
Last year a wonderful Pastor couple asked us if we could use a home base. They didn’t know that we had been looking for something. They had bought a home and the church parsonage was empty if we would like to use it. We accepted this generous offer and we were able to use the parsonage as our home base for a year. Looking back now it really prepared us to know how to manage two separate homes, and to pack up in a timely and efficient manner.
Why a lakehouse?
While we were traveling up to Alaska, we were also searching for properties online. We first looked at land, but found out that a large downpayment was necessary and expenses like a well, septic, added driveway, etc. kept adding up. It made more sense to look for a little, low-maintenance home that also had a large enough driveway for our beloved RV. We looked at duplexes that we could rent out one side and live in the other, but nothing worked out, and that is probably for the best, because we are too busy traveling to be good landlords. That led us to the idea of finding a property that we could rent out when we are gone(which is every weekend and for up to three months at a time). That idea led us to look at lake properties.
We were pleasantly surprised to find lake properties that were super affordable and not too far from our family(we do understand that distance is a relative term, an hour or two drive is not a big deal to us). When we first found our future house, Matt’s parents looked at it for us and took lots of pictures. We feel in love, just looking at the photos and hearing their descriptions. We probably would’ve made an offer over the phone, but we had to make sure the RV would fit in the driveway.
With a little manuevering, and some excellent backing up skills by my husband, the RV fits snuggly in the driveway, with room for up to two cars next to her. Yay!
Excitement, mixed with guilt filled our hearts as Matt and I took the leap and bought this sweet little lake house. Excitement, because, of course! Guilt, because in a way we felt like we were cheating – on the RV, on the nomadic lifestyle, on filling this traveling evangelist family role that we had given to ourselves. Can we do both? Can we be a traveling family and still own a home? Is it selfish to want both? It brought me to do some serious soul-searching and see that this ministry lifestyle isn’t centered around an RV, but that the RV is just a tool, a wonderful tool that keeps us traveling together and sharing in adventures.
I still feel in shock most days, waking up and looking at the peaceful views of the little lake. I didn’t think we needed another home that we loved, but I feel like it is such a refreshing place, it has brought a much needed settling to my heart that I didn’t even know I needed. Will we use airbnb for our lake house? I am not sure, but I do think it will eventually be a place that we can offer for others to use as a getaway of sorts.
Does the lakehouse mean that we are stopping the travels? No. We are still traveling together, now we just have a place to come back to that is just ours. And what a lovely place it is.
Here is a bit of a photo tour of our little place:
Thank you for reading along, if you have been following this 7nomads blog, you will notice that we no longer have the 7nomads t-shirt shop. We have decided to lose the t-shirt idea, it didn’t quite turn out to be all that I wanted it to be. But, I discovered along the way that I really enjoy blogging, so we have kept the blog.
If you would like to find out more about our ministry, Kingdom Pursuit Ministries, go to www.kpministry.org