A Bold Move

I received the call on my son’s 16th birthday.

My kids had both been accepted to an amazing charter school…in Florida.

My husband and I both grew up in South Florida, and he especially, was yearning to return to the Sunshine State. We’d had long-term plans of helping in the expansion of a family business…but those plans weren’t ready to be actualized yet.

Meanwhile, our situation in Georgia had become a bit dire.

We have raised our kids as homeschoolers, blessed with a local homeschool community, and lots of outdoor learning opportunities. It was wonderful for a while, until some drama happened, the community became a bit fragmented, followed by the dramatic upheaval of 2020…and we realized, we had reached the end of the road with the community.

Our oldest child, our son, entered his first year of high school in the fall of 2020. It was a strange time, indeed, to be making this transition.

And we soon came to realize, just how horrifying the public school scenario could be.

It definitely could have been worse than it was - our son never got hurt, nobody laid a finger on him - but there were fights at his school. Several times a week. The police were brought in, quite often.

For us parents, the situation was teetering on the edge of nightmarish.

And our 12-year-old daughter was asking to go to middle school, right across the street from the high school, with much of the same scene.

So, I submitted the charter school applications for both kids.

Two months later, I was trying to make peace with the fact that they probably weren’t getting in, that we’d be in Georgia for at least another school year, and how were we ever going to handle that?

When suddenly, I found myself on the phone with a sweet lady telling me our kids had gotten in!

I was beside myself. I hung up and immediately called my husband at work.

“Are you crazy?” he demanded. “We’re not ready to sell the house. And we’d need to make a lot of money from it. The cost of living in Florida….you know how much I want to move there….but this is crazy.”

How glad I am, that I didn’t listen to him. He definitely “wears the pants” in our relationship, but *that* time, I wasn’t taking no for an answer.

I called the office lady back and told her we were IN.

I knew it was a long shot, but I felt in my heart of hearts that this was a gift from the heavens, a twist of fate, and that’s not the kind of thing you just turn down because of fear.

Sometimes, you have to look fear in the face and say, “Come at me, bro.”

Over the next month, I tiptoed around the subject with my husband, who is not a huge fan of change and was aggravated at the prospect of uprooting our lives so suddenly.

While at my mother-in-law’s house one day, a commercial for the company HomeLight came on - they assist people find buyers for their house.

Just a few days later, I found myself in my master bathroom speaking to a HomeLight representative in hushed tones, while my husband and daughter waited downstairs for me, to go on a hike.

My husband finally agreed to meet with one - just one - real estate agent.

The right guy showed up, said the right things, and exactly a month and three days after that phone call that seemed to come right from heaven, our house went on the market.

The following day, we left for a pre-planned vacation to the exact same area we were desiring to move to.

And four days later, while still on vacation, we had a signed contract on our house in Georgia!!

Back at home, I made a vision board and covered it in green foliage.

You see, we had this gorgeous wooded backyard in Georgia, where deer came to graze, and where our girl had built countless forts.

As much as I was ready to give it up for the beach…I wasn’t really ready to give it up completely, in exchange for a cookie-cutter house sandwiched in between neighbors.

I needed us to have some semblance of privacy, like we’d had for the past 6 years.

So the vision board went up, I envisioned, I called it in…and even when doubt crept in and I watched houses I thought I loved go like hotcakes…I held to that vision.

I started calling around and talking to different realtors, and after a few tries, found a human angel who was willing to help us find a rental. 

At the very top of the first MLS listing she sent me, was the house I knew we were meant to have.

Tucked away behind a small neighborhood, down a gravel road on an acre of land, was the single-story, 1800 sq. ft house that had our names written all over it.

Well, specifically, my name.

It was almost EXACTLY what I had been envisioning…spacious enough for us with a large, open living room and kitchen, no carpet anywhere in the house, a guest room, and oh, so much green.

Did I mention neighbors? How about NONE? In a state where houses are often stacked seemingly on top of one another, I had managed to find a little slice of paradise, 30 minutes from the beach, and twenty minutes from the kids’ school.

We did have a few heart-in-throat situations along the way, with landlords who had just renovated the house and were not wanting pets inside the house.

There was no way we were moving in without our three cats!

For the sake of my sanity, we started off telling them that they’d be outside cats only (a half-truth, if you will)…and after what seemed like an eternity, the realtor came back and let us know that the cats wouldn’t be a big deal.

Not three months after that first fated phone call, we were living in Florida, in a dream house, with space for our kitties to roam.

How quickly the pieces of this puzzle just fell into place, as if orchestrated by a Divine hand!!

Our arrival here was a beautifully designed co-creation, something that we’d wished for but that I ultimately called into existence, at the right and perfect time.

Exactly two years ago today, we were newly landed, still trying to make sense of the whirlwind that had just uprooted us into another plane of existence.

Sometimes things are just meant to be, but we might never know if we don’t take the initiative to stake our claim.

We have incredible power at our disposal, to create our lives the way we want them to be – if only we can know that this is possible for us, beyond the shadow of a doubt.

Doubt is the killer of dreams.

And I am most grateful for the certainty I have, of this sleeping giant within. Ready to be stirred and shaped into the best vision we can contain for ourselves.

Intention is where it all begins.

We are magic.