Never Settle
There are at least 2 meanings behind this post’s title. Ah…. where to begin? Maybe a brief and astounding recap of what the last several months have contained to catch the record up to the present:
- Spent a mild and blessed winter in Winnipegosis, MB
- Appreciated all the fellowship we had with our close friends in that area between Thursday night guy’s group, Friday night Bible Studies / games nights, and Sabbath / Festival celebrations
- Were delayed by several months from our original plans to depart in April after Passover
- Zach, Renee, and Bennah had birthdays
- Reayah pulled off her first entrepreneurial enterprise with a bake sale that turned a profit and was quite a success
- I went to Winnipeg in early June to shoot the last Outdoor Adventure exam race, which turned out epic in so many ways
- Resigned from Clvr
- Found out we were pregnant with #7 !!!
- Discovered the Quarry House is indeed for real on the market and started trying to figure out how YHWH might provide for us to land there
- Managed the overwhelming task of moving back into the trailer after 8 months of adjusting to house life having spread out again…
Last week was pretty intense – building up the momentum and wrapping as many loose ends as possible to once again have enough propulsion to break orbit and launch back into the crazy storm of life on The Road.
Never Settle means primarily two things to me right now. Our lives are presently characterized by disruption (in and intense but also positive and scary but exciting way). Being pregnant again. Technically jobless (though Father is providing projects and income). And a host of other potential stress-storms. We’re travelling again, and so I feel like we’re Never Settling… I thought I would never be ready to settle. Roughly 2 months before Renee got pregnant again (funny wording, I know, as if that just somehow mysteriously happens) I was reflecting on my restlessness to be traveling again and getting frustrated with the financially induced delays (which Father used for other purposes of course). And I distinctly remember asking myself, “is there anything that would make me want to settle down and plant some roots,” and the only thing I could think of at the time was, “well, another child would probably do it,” but like that was ever going to happen. Well, it did. And so there’s part of be that will Never Settle – life is about never settling – staying in motion, constantly growing, learning, adapting, becoming… if we settle and fight that and stagnate we die. We might be alive but we’re dead. Then again – never settling can also be a form of settling. If I were to insist on traveling after that season is over I would be settling for a craving whose time has past.
When I got back to Winnipegosis after a few days in Winnipeg shooting the Race, it felt like I was arriving home, and it was more than just the fact that my family was there… It was a very bizarre emotion because I don’t recall ever feeling like a particular place was home. My nomadic spirit has always felt like home was a state of being not a geographical location. It was very peculiar. Trippy even. More so because I know that ultimately Home is Israel – the land promised by the Creator to His people. And perhaps this is a stronger reason for my typical aversion to associations of Home with any physical place I might temporarily inhabit. Even this sensation I felt for Winnipegosis – it felt more like Home than I recall any other place feeling – but I must acknowledge that that too is only a temporary condition even if it lasts for years.
So here we are on what will likely be our last major tour. That in itself is laden with quite a bit of surreal strangeness because over a year ago we thought we were arriving in Winnipegosis to build and settle. But I guess we hadn’t been made ready quite yet and there are shaping adventures that must be chased yet. We are delighted in the joys and familiarity of travel life once again and have been in Winnipeg for almost a week now. Of course, with the delights there are also the stresses, which are compounded by the things that make it difficult to pretend we’re just in vacation mode. House life is so much simpler. The differences are stark and fascinating with the vantage point to compare them acutely. Although some things are simplified, there’s also a whole other layer of logistics that comes with the territory.
Never Settle also embodies the core DNA we want to imprint on our next company. We? Well, it’s a really long story. But I and two of the other three principal owners / members of Clvr resigned. Some dust is still settling, but my time there is completely done. It was really an odd and unexpected plot twist in my life story, but the Author has His reasons. I’m excited to discover them. It still feels weird to be done with something that I never anticipated ending this way and poured an immense amount of myself into for 2.5 years.
We leave Winnipeg tomorrow with a spontaneous shift in the original plan to stay here at the Welcomestop campground until Monday. Instead, we’re headed further south in Manitoba to spend the weekend with dear friends and catch up as much as possible before we leave Canada.
On the horizon – the adventures that already peak around the corner, staring at us even now:
- Heading to Denver, CO primarily for some amazing wedding events and to spend some summer time in the mountains with our dear family and friends there.
- Building a new company. It might even be called something like Never Settle. And it will be very different from Clvr or any other company for that matter.
- Perhaps a fall east coast tour with destinations along the way of getting there (?)
- Huge decisions to make like where to have this next baby, where to spend winter, how soon to return to Canada…
- Immigration processes to research and apply for my permanent resident status in Canada.
- Finding Home: Winnipegosis? Quarry House? The Edge? Somewhere else?
What does the Author have up His sleeve?
