California for Stefani

Sometimes thinking isn’t my strong suit because it gets me in trouble LOL.  We have had an interesting week.  We started out last week with a potential job in Hope, BC and we were fairly excited to take it, but when we finally pinned the owner down to committing to his promises, he went back on them, so we turned the job down.  What we did figure out from it all though, is I think we want to be managers/caretakers of a resort.  We have gone back and forth about it, but the job offer truly confirmed that we really would like to do that.  We will see if that pans out though.  This brings me to my thought…

I have been asking God for an answer…should we be caretakers, or shouldn’t we?  Do we keep trying, or do we stop?  Do we look for other jobs in other towns, or do we just stay here?  All these questions we ask God, and when we don’t hear a strong answer, we wonder where he is.  So here I was driving home from work (with the convertible top down of course) and I thought it again…why aren’t we hearing a clear answer?   I was feeling a little ignored…and then it hit me…let’s take God out of the picture.  Yes, do it…not saying let’s not trust God, but let’s take him out.  I am a regular person, living a regular life with no religion to cloud my judgements…what would we do?  Who would we be whining too then?   Who would we be asking for help from then?  We would have to do things based on our own judgments and experiences.  We wouldn’t have God to fall back on when things don’t work out, or if we don’t hear the answers we were hoping to hear, etc. 

Now let’s put him back into the picture…let’s use God as he was meant to be.  He gave us choices in life.   When Adam and Eve sinned, we were all doomed to fall with that sin and when God sent Jesus, we were saved from that sin, but that is only after this life on earth.  During the life on earth we have to be surrounded by this sin…our choices, other people’s choices and the evil that is the devil.  We ask for guidance, and I think we do get it in some ways, but we do have to walk this road and make our own decisions and not just always take the easy way and fall on God to make all our decisions.   I am not saying we don’t ask for guidance, but I also think we need to make our own choices too.  We do what we think is best (in God’s eyes), but when it doesn’t work out, then we blame God.  This way we can only blame ourselves LOL. 

This thinking has made me feel a little better actually.  It means I need to think about what I want, what God might want for me, and what our future might hold for us.  It is all part of the big picture.   I know God will be there no matter what, even if we make a bad choice because that is part of my faith.  I think the main thing that God wants us to know, and why we were created, is for love.  Not for having a scapegoat for when things go wrong, or when we can’t make up our own mind.  God created us to commune with him…so let’s commune…and stop asking him so many questions…I don’t want a one way friendship with God/Jesus where all I ever do is ask for help and always want something from him…I want a two way friendship where we talk about stuff together, figure things out together and just love each other no matter what.   Let’s take life out of the equation now and have it just be me and God sitting quietly (or with lots of loud music) talking about stuff.  Nothing heavy, just stuff and enjoying each other’s company.  Maybe that is what it is all about!  I think it is best done on a sunny day, with the convertible top down and some great worship music playing.  That is how God and me commune together.  I will focus on that, and not all the stuff I want God to do for me.

I love the city life…or at least living close to the city.  We live in the suburbs and that is fun too because the big city is nearby.  I have LOVED living in Surrey/White Rock for the last 15 years.  The ocean is in my blood and we have lived our dream for a few years while living at the beach.  Sometimes those dreams come crashing down though and we have to adjust…first it was our dream of moving to Mexico and being sent home (still hurts even today) and then Doug loosing his job and being unemployed and then only getting a min. wage job, which made it that we had to move from our beach front home.  That is life though and we will treasure our beach life even if it was only for a few years. 

What does our future hold though?  Living here will only get more and more expensive and when we retire, there is no way we will be able to afford to live here on our government pensions…so do we plan a little already?  On one hand i would just like to ignore the future and just go on as we have been going.  I have a few good clients and Doug will eventually get a better job and his current job isn’t awful.  But on the other hand do we look at opportunities and see if they will work within our dreams?   Our dream is to live in someplace exotic and run a boutique hotel…but is that unrealistic?  No idea, but does it hurt to try?  Actually the answer to that question is YES…we have been deeply hurt by trying, but do we try again?

Our realistic dream is for Doug to get a decent job in the Training and Development field, but that could also include running a boutique hotel as you need to train people and know how to teach people to learn skills.   So what are our goals?  Pay the bills, enjoy life and go on vacations…not really high expectations if you ask me.   So why this blog?  We are looking at running a hotel in Hope, BC.  A little dinky town that is fairly depressed and the job would be 24/7, but the people who are running it now liked the job and figure it would be a good job to get into the area we are looking at.  Does it allow us to build a base to our dream?  Can we do this job for a few years?  It would pay the bills, still allow us to go on vacations and I think we could have fun doing it.   Can a little town like Hope satisfy my city needs?  Not likely, but thankfully the city is only an hour and half away, unless you consider Chilliwack a city, and then that is only half an hour away.  We don’t have the job yet and we are still praying about it, but what if it does become ours?  Do we say YES or do we live our quiet, mundane life here in Ocean Park?  Nothing against mundane because that means nothing tragic is going on. 

The city life is in my blood along with the ocean, but just because something is in your blood, doesn’t mean you can’t try different things and go out on adventures.  We have no kids and we can just uproot if we want to.   We are trying to hear God’s voice in this…granted we know that God encouraged us to go to Mexico and we all know how that turned out…but at least we know that we will go outside of our box and take a chance.   I know Mexico wasn’t how God wanted that to end, so we need to keep having faith that his voice is true and even if things go to the crapper, we know we followed his voice no matter the risk. 

Maybe this job will allow us to move to California someday?  Not likely but heck, why not dream.  Maybe someone will want an experienced couple to take over their ranch and run a bed and breakfast or something like that…ok, I am getting off point…not surprising since I tend to wander in the head a little LOL.  Life is a great adventure if we choose to look at the positive in it and not the negative.  God never promised us that this life will be perfect and smelling like a rose garden…but he promised us peace, protection and LOVE…so maybe this will be an adventure…or maybe this is just a kick in the butt that says “not this time”, but you are ready to get out there and see what adventure is waiting for you.  So here is to praying that God will have his hand in our lives no matter what happens…if it’s staying here in Ocean Park, or moving to some little hick town surrounded by mountains instead of an ocean…we are game for whatever because we are loved by God

As Steven Curtis Chapman says so nicely in his song…

 

Started out this morning
In the usual way
Chasing thoughts inside my head
Of all I had to do today
Another time around the circle
Try to make it better than the last

I opened up the Bible
And I read about me
Said, I'd been a prisoner
And God's grace had set me free

And somewhere between the pages
It hit me like a lightning bolt
I saw a big frontier in front of me
And I heard somebody say, "Let's go"

Saddle up your horses
We've got a trail to blaze
Through the wild blue yonder
Of God's amazing grace

Let's follow our Leader
Into the glorious unknown
This is a life like no other
This is the great adventure, yeah

Come on get ready
For the ride of your life
Gonna leave long faced religion
In a cloud of dust behind
And discover all the new horizons
Just waiting to be explored
This is what we were created for, yeah

Saddle up your horses
We've got a trail to blaze
Through the wild blue yonder
Of God's amazing grace

Let's follow our Leader
Into the glorious unknown
This is a life like no other
This is the great adventure

We'll travel over, over mountains so high
We'll go through valleys below
Still through it all, we'll find that
This is the greatest journey
That the human heart will ever see

The love of God will take us far
Beyond my wildest dreams, yeah
Oh, saddle up your horses
Come on, get ready to ride