My family managed to move even more often that my Army-brat husband did. Due to being renters, changing school districts, changing jobs, whatever the reason, we averaged a move every other year while growing up. I had lived in something like 13 houses by the time I was 16 and went off to college.

But, even though I moved so often, we always lived in Southern California, and it never occurred to me to live anywhere else. Where else do you have such amazing beaches and mountains? An utter lack of humidity?

Smog-induced gorgeous sunsets?

And now I own a house in Mississippi.

MISSISSIPPI.

A state I never even dreamed of living in when I was younger. I just had fun spelling it.

Of course, I don’t live in the house that we own anymore. And since getting married, I’ve lived in:

San Diego, California (where they have road signs warning you to beware of illegal immigrants crossing the road)
Port Hueneme, California (where they have strawberry fields on the sides of the road)
Iwakuni, Japan (where I couldn’t understand any of the roadsigns)
Great Mills, Maryland (where they have roadsigns warning you to beware of the Amish and their horse-drawn carriages on the road)
Gulfport, Mississippi (where all we saw was destruction on the side of the road when we first moved there after Katrina)
And now we’re in Baton Rouge, Louisiana (where they have drive-thru daiquiri stands on the side of the road)

And I love it. I love experiencing the different cultures and look forward to where else we will journey.

I’m not even sure if we’ll settle back in California when our Navy life is over. That’s still at least 10 years away.

And I’ve learned that I really don’t have any control over where I’ll be then.

And that God can come up with a much better long-term plan than I ever can.

My only journey to another country was an ill-advised drive to Tijuana with a cousin.

When I thought about traveling in my futre, I had vague ideas of traveling to countries like England, France and Scotland, and doing some sightseeing. I didn’t really have an interest in the people of other cultures and definitely did not dream of living in another country!

But in college I started going to various Christian conferences with friends, and the road-trip became a much-beloved tradition. I can’t even count the number of times my friends and I drove to Colorado, Texas and New Mexico for various trips.

Then after my junior year of college, I took that fateful trip to Cambodia that completely changed the way I think of travel.

I learned that I could love a whole people. That my heart could break just thinking of their spiritual bondage. That travel could be more meaningful than just seeing a few sites.

And that one trip to Cambodia brought with it two visits to Bangkok, Thailand, where a man offered to buy me from the woman I was walking through the hotel with.

Then there was a second trip to Cambodia, which also included two more trips to Thailand where I actually got to spend a night with one of my best friends who was in Thailand for a couple months.

Later I went on a short-term trip to Moscow, Russia. That trip brought with it a few days in Germany, where we got to attend a festival and see the Gutenberg Bible.

From Russia we then went to Slovenia, a country I didn’t even know existed before I discovered I was going there.

And in Slovenia some friends and I rented a car (which I was elected to drive since I drove stick) and then we drove through the Alps to Austria, where we had lunch, and then to Italy where we had gelato. The switchbacks and hairpin turns I navigated that day in the Alps numbered in the hundreds, but so did the gorgeous hidden views of countries I had never expected to be in.

A few years later found me actually living in Japan for three and a half years. Two of my children were born there in a Japanese hospital.

I’ve also been able to visit Jamaica, Cancun and Mazatlan on various vacations.

I have no idea where we might travel next or for how long.

But I’m sure it will be more than I dreamed fifteen years ago.

Like right after. I thought 23 was the perfect age to get married. Part of me didn’t want kids. I thought a mom should stay home with her kids, and didn’t think I was cut out for that. But if I did have them, I wanted two, and for sure wanted to be done having them before I was 30.

And now?

I’m a SAHHM. A stay at home homeschooling mom.

How did that happen?

I have three kids, not two, although I did have them before 30. But we might have more.

I did get married after college. Well, three days after I finished grad school!

I was 23.

But only God could have made it so that I not only love staying at home, but I may never return to the workforce outside of the house. I plan on homeschooling throughout the high school years, and after that I would love to be available to other young moms and families. To be able to help and support and babysit children and bring meals when moms are sick.

My Beachbody coaching is starting to take off in ways I never really imagined, and I am now getting paid weekly for basically exercising regularly and talking to others about exercising.

How could I have imagined enjoying any of this 15 years ago?

How does your family situation look compared to what you used to imagine?

I was 16.

And I had big plans.

Some of those plans worked out, and some, well, not so much. So for the next week or so (depending how many plans I remember) you get to hear about them!

When I started college, I had several ideas about what my career would be.

A high-priced therapist. Neurologist. Neurosurgeon. Speech Therapist. FBI Profiler.

I didn’t really know for sure what I was going to do, but I knew my career would be successful, I would be highly paid, well-dressed and it would have something to do with Psychology, Linguistics or the brain.

And now? Career? What’s that? I stay home with my kids and I home school them. I have no plans to ever put them in school unless God really changes things. I wash dishes, change diapers and play Candyland. My efforts to lose weight have resulted in a very part-time from-home BeachBody coaching business, which is more fun than work. And I wouldn’t change it.

What were your plans for a career once upon a time?

When Isaac asked me to get back together with him, I had shocked myself by saying no.  I had already had one fickle boyfriend, who broke up with me and got back together on a whim, and I wasn’t about to let that happen again.

After turning Isaac down, I went home and finally threw that shoebox in the trash.

And then got it out again two hours later.

As the school year started, I found Isaac in my life more and more.  We saw each other at church.  He’d make sure to talk to me for a few minutes at lunch after church.  I went to a weekly meeting at USC where my college pastor, and basically my boss, was, and  I’d see him there.  I was fully involved in Orange County, 50 miles away from Isaac, with a group of 12 girls in the new Christian Challenge Bible study I’d started, yet Isaac still managed to be around, helping out and making himself useful.  

One weekend I took three girls to a conference that many of the Christian Challenge and BSU groups were at.

My next door neighbor?

Isaac.

We ended up sitting outside our doors and talking for hours.  I don’t even remember about what, but I know that by the end of the weekend I knew that I’d never fallen out of love with him, he’d never fallen out of love with me, and he had just been trying to be obedient to what he thought God was doing in our lives when we broke up.

We both also saw that while it would be difficult to be living 50 miles away from each other, it was possible to still spend time together without sacrificing the separate ministries  we were involved in.

And we both knew that no one else out there held any interest for us.

We still weren’t in any position to get married.  I was raising support in my job as a director for Christian Challenge and had just started a Masters program, and he was still in college and had no income.  We were careful with our time, and soon the year was over and Isaac graduated and was heading from California to Rhode Island for Surface Warfare Officer School.  He was there for five months before being stationed in San Diego on a ship.

Isaac returned to California and…didn’t propose.  Months went by of commutes between Orange County and San Diego, and weekends where we wanted to see each other but couldn’t because one of us had obligations.  My heart was becoming more and more torn, and I finally had some sympathy for Isaac’s decision to break up with me two years before.

A heart can’t be in two places at once.

I was down to only about 9 months left in my program, and would soon have to decide if I was going to continue on as Campus Director, and realized that something had to change.  And since I didn’t believe I should be the one to propose or to push for a proposal, I began to prepare myself to break up with Isaac so that I could be fully committed in one place.

But then something was different.  Isaac had this…look.  And I started tormenting my roommate, knowing that if Isaac was going to propose, she would know.