Three Short Years

Logging on to social media has been a bit eery this week. Every time I open a social media app, there are the curated memories from “on this day blank number of years ago.” For us, it has been “on this day three years ago.” Three years ago we took this picture on our very first waterfall hike. Three years.

Three.

Short.

Years.

The memories popping up are from our 2018 summer vacation when we visited the Smoky Mountains for the first time. Our pictures are us at a waterfall, us river rafting, us on a hiking trail, us at another waterfall. There we are, all seven of us crowded into the screen for a selfie, living it up for the five days a year we had to do what we wanted to do where we wanted to do it.

What the social media memories do not show is what happened next. How it was “on this day three years ago” when it was written on our hearts to return to the mountains, which we did—a total of four times in those three years. It doesn’t show how we wrestled with where we were versus where we wanted to be. It doesn’t show the longing prayers we had of what to do next.

What the social media memories do not show is how we spent the next two years trying to make the life we wanted out of the life we currently had. Like many people, we thought we would retire to the mountains in another 25 years. Then we thought maybe we could purchase a vacation home that we could use at our leisure and rent out when we weren’t there. But let’s be real—how often would we have really gotten to use that vacation home? And retirement? We wanted to be in the mountains with our kids, not years later when they would all be moved out with families of their own.

For two years we waited until finally we had to ask ourselves, wait for what? What exactly were we waiting for?

We couldn’t come up with a good answer.

But we knew there were things that we needed to get in order before we could seriously think about making the move. For us, we were still sitting underneath a mountain of student loan debt. We hated the feeling of that debt hanging over our heads, and we knew that debt would go wherever we went. We also had to let go of the idea of all the things we thought we “should” be doing and, instead, figure out all the things we really wanted to be doing.

So, we got to work. It took us six months of making intentional decisions—decisions that would change our lives. We worked on how we were spending our time and how we were spending our money. We stripped away the things we didn’t care as much about and honed in on the things that were most important to us. It took us six months to realize there wasn’t so much holding us back anymore, and there certainly wasn’t any good reason to wait any longer. It took us six months until we traded in our house with a pool in the suburbs for our 115-year old farmhouse in the mountains.

The social media memories that keep popping up show our little faces in the mountains “on this day three years ago.” We were in the mountains on vacation having the time of our lives. Today, on any given day, you will find us in the mountains having the time of our lives.

�No, it’s not like a vacation every day. We work, we school, we clean, we pay bills, we do yard work. Yes, we do happen to do those things in the mountains, but that’s just geography.

The real changes—the changes you don’t see on social media—are the changes that have taken place inside of us, deep down in our hearts. You don’t see the lessons we have learned and how we are changed as individuals and as a family.

We have all learned to listen to those small voices calling us to do the things we didn’t think we could do. We have learned to not wait to go after the things we want. We have learned big things can happen with even the smallest steps. And we have learned that today matters, so you might as well use it!

If you would have asked me on our first vacation here, “where do you see yourself in three years?”—living here would not have been my answer. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I would have never thought that would be possible.

Goodness, I sure am glad we could prove me wrong!