It's About The Journey
I have been reflecting a lot on the last two years of my life, this time of year always causes me to reflect. I have been thinking about our move from Ontario to New Brunswick, we got here in such a fast and furious way, the actual decision is starting to feel blurry. This requires that I trust God. That I learn not to justify hard feelings and that I learn to be at peace with the reality of what is.
Going back to the seed of New Brunswick, takes us to the early summer of 2014. Tyler’s good friend had recently moved to New Brunswick, purchased a large piece of land that he planned to transform into a campground and this friend invited Tyler and another buddy to come for a visit.
Since I had been with Tyler, he had flown and travelled without me before. For his first trip to New Brunswick, I was pregnant and something felt different for me while he was on this trip. The weight of our marriage and my need for Tyler was heavier now that we were starting a family. I felt a little anxious as he went off on this trip alone and I had never felt that before when we had travelled by himself previously. I share this because I believe our spirit gives us signs but if we aren't looking for them, we can't follow them. As I look back, I knew something was starting to happen for us but I thought it was just anxiety.
Tyler can tell you his own stories about this trip but the parts that stick in my mind was how much he loved being close to nature and how much he loved being in the quiet. After coming home from that trip, he always referred to New Brunswick as “God's country”.
The seed had been planted.
Over the next 8 years, moving to New Brunswick would randomly come up in conversation. I would encourage the move. I always felt excited for the opportunity to explore, there were many parts of my life in Corunna that made me feel trapped or stuck and the idea of a fresh start and adventure in a new place sounded exhilarating to me.
We would eventually circle back to our love for our family and the dreaming session of moving to New Brunswick would end.
How could we leave our families? Tyler and I always felt so blessed to be geographically close to both our families and families we loved being with and who loved being with us.
Post pandemic, everything changed.
We had endured a lot of loss and also in survival mode, made some unwise choices. We wanted a financial reset and we had been dreaming of a little homestead for years but in Ontario, that dream seemed to get further away. The cost of land and housing in New Brunswick made our homestead dream more achievable for us and that move we had been talking about for years started to resurface.
We could keep going the way we were
Or
We could make a change
We decided to make a change.
When fear is present, I don’t move. I am too afraid something bad might happen, I don’t even consider possible good outcomes and I just stay right where I am. I get frustrated, I develop habits that have me feeling terrible and I don’t experience any growth.
When I trust God, I move forward, I feel free, I feel all my feelings, even the hard ones and I move forward.
I am learning that growth is more important to me, than perfection.
I like the feeling of growth better, than being perfect.
Growth is actually attainable, perfection is not.
I can’t experience growth, unless I trust God because releasing control is scary.
My desire to have everything be perfect, for fear of something going wrong, kept me so stuck for so long. Now that I have learned this about myself, when I start to feel stuck, I can search for the fear and pray for the strength to trust God, even though the fear is present, it’s not holding me back.
Fear will always be present in this world, we are all struggling with some kind of fear. How we choose to deal with that fear, it’s up to us. I want to cling to God and His promises, when I do, I get to experience a freedom in Him, a glimpse of Heaven on earth and it makes this life here, a little more enjoyable.
”So be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid and do not panic before them. For the Lord your God will personally go ahead of you. He will neither fail you nor abandon you.”“
Deuteronomy 31:6 NLT
https://bible.com/bible/116/deu.31.6.NLT
So we faced the fear and moved across the country to a province where Tyler knew about three people. I have so many stories I can tell about our move but the one I want to focus on today is regarding our original dream for why we are coming here, the homestead.
When we first arrived in New Brunswick we lived in an Air B & B in Saint Martins. Saint Martins is a tiny village on the Bay of Fundy and most of the village is only open during the summer months for tourism. We moved to Saint Martins in November after everything was already closed for the winter. The village has a wonderful country grocery store + 2 gas stations one of which had a pizza place in the back (this has since burned down). To get to a big grocery store in the nearest town, was roughly a 40 min drive, we were in the country. Before moving to New Brunswick I sold my van so we also became a one vehicle family. The lifestyle I had living in Ontario, going anywhere I wanted, whenever I wanted, was a very big contrast to the life I had just entered when arriving in Saint Martins New Brunswick.
Where Tyler would work for the next year was a quick walk through the bush behind our home. Our time in Saint Martins was the most restful and restorative time in my life. I needed it but learning to rest didn't come easy for me at first. I was hurting so bad when we first moved, I had become addicted to busyness to cope with my pain. Before moving, I had filled my calendar so full, I didn't have time to be with my feelings. This caused internal conflict because I also wasn’t spending time on anything my heart actually desired and that perpetuated the pain and the addiction to busyness. The Lord knew what I needed and as I came face to face with my pain and sin and unravelled in the big country house in Saint Martins, the Lord began to calm my spirit, alleviate my anxiety and increase my focus and joy for the simple and slow daily life. The kids and I started to build a rhythm for our homeschool and life at home. Because Tyler worked so close to home we were able to eat three meals together everyday for 7 months. This was a blessing and as you can imagine, challenging at times too. As I learned how to rest and adapt to country living and enjoy all it had for me that season, I also realised I didn't want to live that far out in the country long term.
While living in Saint Martins we started attending Kings Church in Quispamsis. It was about a 35 minute drive from Saint Martins to Quispamsis. On Sundays in the spring we started to pack lunches before we left for church. We would go to church and then after, take our lunches and explore a park or trail in Quispamsis or Rothesay. As we continued attending Kings Church and exploring the area where the church was located, we started to really feel drawn to the Kennebecasis Valley.
As we considered what we had learned from living in such a rural location all winter and our desire for being closer to stores, our church and places where our children could take part in extra curricular activities, we started to feel lost as we questioned our original desires to be home steaders living in the country.
The dream started to change. If you have ever gone through a season when you have a dream that starts to change, it can feel scary because you can question your actions and only focus on mistakes you have made. What we have learned to do is seek the blessings and lessons in the journey. We needed to go through everything we have gone through this year to grow to where we are today, the original goal of the journey doesn't matter so much at this point, it’s what we have learned along the way.
We are currently renting our home on Monaco Drive Rothesay and the blessings here are abundant. We trust the Lord has a purpose for our exact location in this season and we can see so much of that each day. There are many parts of the path ahead that we can’t see. We have goals and new dreams that have evolved from where we started.
I have learned so much over the last year, grown closer to God and our family has grown closer too so I will always be grateful for the last year.
I will also tell you, things haven’t gone how we planned and I learned I actually don’t want a homestead. I was created to do other work, I needed every minute of the last year to learn that and to develop the confidence in God for what He did create me to do.
We love it here in New Brunswick. We miss our family and friends. We are on the road trusting God and learning to be honest about how we feel and what we desire.
I am learning to accept there is no perfection anywhere in this world and that security in this world is an illusion designed to keep me stuck. I used to associate safety with familiarity but that was keeping me caged. I wanted to feel safe in all my steps but I am safe because I have been saved by Jesus, the only one who can truly keep me safe.
Praise God for the way He works all things for the good of those who love Him and His glory.
I want to leave you with this thought; That thing you want to act on, that you are terrified to do because it could go horribly wrong, what if it doesn’t go at all how you plan? What if it goes how you need it to go? The seed is there for a reason but it may turn out its not what you originally thought and that’s ok.
Pursue the process.
Believe there is purpose in everything.
God is good!
Xoxo
Heather
