Small Town Life...

When our family relocated from Prince Rupert to Abbotsford in 2007, we knew that leaving that small town behind meant more than saying goodbye to close friends, but a way of life as well.  For the next four years we were able to coordinate our lives so that school, work, church and life were pretty close together.  But something was missing.

We were busy.

There's the life of stuff and then there's the stuff of life.  Sometimes our lives can get cluttered with stuff.  Usually that stuff is the everyday gotta do it kinda stuff, like school and work and other routines...things we do because somehow we think we either have to do them or because it would seem strange not to.  

Then there's the stuff of life.  These are the friendships, the times spent doing things we enjoy, the ability and availability to be spontaneous...those kinds of things.  This stuff is the stuff that doesn't seem to keep time; that somehow our watches and internal time clocks seem to vanish.  It's those times which often make us late for the stuff we "have" to do.

I've found that living in a small town again has afforded a great deal more time for the stuff of life, not a life of stuff.  Whether it's having time to make breakfast in the morning, kissing my boys goodbye as they leave for school, looking at my watch and realizing I'm late to take lunch because I've enjoyed working, Waffle Wednesdays with friends, drop-in Volleyball, Thursday night dinners as a staff, mushroom picking, or it taking 8 minutes to go to the grocery store and back for sour cream and bread.  

Yes, living in a small town is busy, but it's a different kind of busy.  It's a busy where the time seems to fly by and the routine does not seem as forced or necessary.

Have I also mentioned that we've found a new church to get immersed in?  It's a Fellowship Baptist Church just up the road.  And when I say just up the road I literally mean that it takes longer to buckle up three boys than it does to drive there!  We will be the youngest family there and two of our boys doubled the sunday school size so there will be some adjusting, but it felt like home (at least it did for me).  

We're looking forward to a more intentional life as we adjust to this new season, and I really do think that living in a small town has a big part to play in that.