Living Life by Default: The Florida Chronicles, pt. 2

If given the opportunity and resources to move to the place of your dreams, would you? Seriously think about the question. If it meant you had to gather the courage to leave all you’ve known and venture out without the promise of succeeding but also without the promise of failing, would you? We’re talking willingly leaping out of your comfort zone in exchange for an opportunity to do make your life spectacular but with no assurance on the outcome, would you?

This is the situation Tim and I found ourselves in. We’re not saying that our life in Tennessee was bad. We were comfortable. We had family, great friends and an amazing church we were involved in. But in the past couple of years, we’ve felt ourselves left wanting, as a couple. Tim and I first got together when we were 17. We graduated High School together, went on to graduate college together, eventually got married, got the house, had kids and steady jobs. All in all, we were very fortunate.. However, both of us felt something was missing. Even to the point were we looked at each other one day and said “What next?” We had conquered all of the happy life milestones by the age of 36. So what now? We hadn’t thought that far ahead. We had come to the end of our list of goals. While I say we were comfortable, neither one of us were happy in our jobs. We were living paycheck to paycheck with long hours at stressful jobs and we were feeling it. We were living life by default. Just going with the turns in the road that were ahead of us and never venturing off the beaten path. We were content but not inspired.

Some may stop here and say “Well, no one really LOVES their jobs” but we refused to accept that response. I spent 8 years as an insurance claims adjuster. Sitting behind a desk in a cubical with a mountain of pressure on my shoulders. There HAD to be more.

When we discovered St. Augustine, we knew… THAT was our next goal. And man, what a goal we set. We were going to be uprooting everything we knew and moving to a city where we knew no one, 8 hours from everything we’re used to, without job prospects. I mean, if we were going to pick a life goal, why not go for one that is unimaginable to most? Go big or go home, right? So we went BIG.

It took about a year of planning before we pulled the trigger on any major decisions and that turned out to be one of the longest years ever. I mean, when you get on facebook and tell all your friends that you are going to move to FL on a whim, they tend to not take you seriously. I remember one time, in our Sunday school class, we mentioned that we were planning on going back down to FL several times to look for jobs and houses and someone said “Wait, I thought you were joking!” Nope, we weren’t. Life is not meant to be dull. God gave us this gift to make it the very best we can. Would you rather receive a present wrapped in tin foil (Tim actually did this to me once) or one wrapped in beautiful, sparkly paper with an extravagant shiny bow? The gift itself is the same but what you do with it makes all the difference. Some may be content with tin foil, and that’s fine. But me? I went for the bow.

First stop in our planning process was finances. I have to admit, its not really fun to go from making this huge life changing decision to being a responsible adult to make sure the life changing decision doesn’t leave you living out of a box.

We sat down and calculated what was going out vs. what was coming in. We paid off what we could. We sold what we didn’t need. I created an excel spreadsheet to track month to month. When Christmas came around, I made quite a few of our gifts instead of using the credit card. Actually, the credit card became our enemy. We threw them in a drawer and if we didn’t have the money, we didn’t get whatever it was. I had a pension that I didn’t know was there at my job and we both had 401K’s. We wisely divided up our tax return and saved any cash given to us to go towards “The Florida Fund”. When I said we planned, I mean we PLANNED.

Tim was put in charge of logistics. He researched the schools, houses, found us a realtor in FL, and even located the cub scout pack the boys would be in so we could plug them in a social network as quickly as possible. We educated ourselves on homestead states, credit scores, flood zones, interest rates and taxes. While Tim was doing the research, I was getting things paid. We had made the decision to move in June 2018. And what initially was a 2 year plan, rapidly transformed into a move goal date of May, the following year. We were not messing around.

From the moment we decided to go with this urge to move, the more things fell into perfect place. Like we were the pieces of a God size jigsaw puzzle and finally found our fit. Not only did we plan but we also prayed. A LOT. I mean, if we were going to do this incredible thing, we wanted God’s blessing with it. And the more we gave thanks for the wonderful things that were happening for us, the more things fell in place.

By January, we had paid off phones, minimized expenses, repaired, painted, and cleaned out anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary. With all that done, we found ourselves in a position for the next big step, for me to quit my job. Why me? Well, we needed to tap into the pension I had accrued over 8 years of blood sweat and tears as a claims adjuster. With this pension we were able to pay off all remaining credit card debt, our car and leave us with savings enough to allot of the move.

So I quit my job, without a job lined up, and then the God’s plan stalled…..

We had come to what I can only believe to be our phase of faith. We had done all the leg work leading up to this moment without really knowing what to do next. We just had Faith that God would give us direction.

We went back down to St. Augustine for Spring break for jobs interviews, with no success. I had quit my job in February and spent three months in a holding pattern. With spring break being a bust, we came back to TN with a grain of fear/doubt in our plans. Actually, I was fighting off the urge to go full fledged panic mode.

WHAT HAVE I DONE?????

This why God placed Tim and I together. He may have gotten a little worried at one point during this hiatus of spiritual direction but he always was there to pull me back down to Earth with assurance that it will all be fine.

For 3 months I searched for jobs in FL from TN. And yes, this is as difficult as it sounds. Typically, when people post jobs, they want to

meet with you right away and you can’t do that when you’re 8 hours away.

But I also feel like God stalled us here in order to give me a period of rest. See, I have an anxiety disorder that I struggle with on a daily basis. Sure, everyone has a little anxiety or stress but mine is not manageable without medication as I am prone to panic attacks. This probably wasn’t a very good match for the field that I was in, as it is one of the most high stress jobs you can have, and yet I managed it for 8 years.

When I quit, it was a great day. I worked with some great people but I was not cut out for the job and had gone as far as I was going to go. When I left my job, a mountain of pressure lifted from my shoulders and I felt free, for the first time in as long as I could remember.

And so , with this in mind, I couldn’t help but think of the end of the movie Babe, where the farmer pats the pig on the head and says “Well done, pig. Well, done”. Babe’s job was done. While my job as a claims adjuster was hard, we would not have been able to make this transition without the timed I put in there.

The first few weeks after I left, it was like a celestial hand patted me on the head and said “Well, done. Rest”.

And so I did.

For The Florida Chronicles, pt. 1