The Jumping-Off Point

As a child, I knew of only two ways to get off a merry-go-round.

Option A: Slow down (either by dragging my foot or by plain old inertia) and hop off once things have decelerated enough so that the surrounding blur solidified into distinguishable objects.

Option B: Wait until I was spinning as fast as possible and then take a flying leap off the platform, hoping desperately that I didn’t aim my jump right into the see-saw.

As we move into 2019, Amanda and I are intentionally slowing down the merry-go-round. We want our transition to travelling for Life Action to be as smooth as possible. To that end, we’re stepping away from our more demanding responsibilities in order to create more margin in our lives. Our goal is to have more time to rest, study, pack, and raise the rest of our support.

“So what does this mean?”

Over the last few weeks, Amanda has been handing off her Classical Conversations roles as a Community Director and Support Representative. For my part, I’ve turned in my official resignation at work and will be stepping down from my job on January 18th. It’s hard to say goodbye to the roles and people that have shaped us and defined our lives for the last decade. It’s also a little scary, because we’re not 100% funded with Life Action.

It may sound crazy to walk away from our sources of income before we have the next stage lined up. To be honest, it feels a little crazy. I keep wanting to hear that reassuring voice “Please wait until the ride has come to a complete stop before exiting.”

But as Amanda and I have talked and prayed and planned, we’ve come to realize that there’s no way for us to continue at our current pace and be ready emotionally and spiritually for our next adventure. This ride we’ve been on is not going to slow down on its own. We have to stick our foot out, slow things down, and hop off before it’s done spinning.

“So what are you going to do?”

That’s a great question. After I finish work, we’ll be focusing on a handful of projects

• Developing teaching content for our upcoming Life Action events
• Thinning out our stuff and getting the house packed up and ready to rent

  

• Launching our social media presence
• Building the rest of our monthly support base
• Eventually moving into our trailer!

We’re looking forward to having the time and mental bandwidth to devote to preparing.

“So how can I help?”

I’m glad you asked!

As always, we depend on your prayers. We need faith as we enter a time of already-not-yet – leaving former jobs and responsibilities behind, looking ahead to new roles and opportunities. We need wisdom as we adjust our finances and budget to fit our new life. We need the right family to rent and care for our house while we are gone.

And we need to close the gap in our monthly support. Many of you are already supporting us on a monthly basis. And many others have generously donated one-time gifts. It’s humbling and awe-inspiring that through your sacrifice, we are sitting at 65% of our needed monthly support after only four months of fundraising. We are beyond grateful.

As we enter 2019, we’d like to ask you once again to pray about what God wants you to do. What we need right now are friends who are willing to commit to monthly support – $25, $50, $100 a month, maybe more. It would really only take a handful of you pledging to give every month to get us on the road. Just click the link below, or the Partner With Us! link in the menu up top.

Will you start 2019 by partnering with us?

Header photo by Frederick Kearney Jr. on Unsplash