Category — Posts by Kate

Keizer, OR:: Apples are some of my favorite fruit. Especially when it comes to cooking and baking. They are good sweet or savory, baked or fresh, in a crust or in a bowl. My in-laws have an old apple tree in their back yard with big apples pictured above. Molly and I have been picking apples for the last few days and enjoying them! Yesterday was apple sauce, today is apple pie and tomorrow we will enjoy the simplicity of apples paired with gooey caramel.

Focusing my energy on Molly’s development has kept me occupied and distracted me from the lonely fact that I’m really not going to see my friends everyday. I have created a calendar of daily projects following weekly themes. This week has been all about apples. Next week is pumpkins, then leaves and critters, followed by ghosts and ghouls. We’ll finish the month of October with a week of costumes: masks, capes, face paint and all! Almost each day incorporates a kitchen activity. It’s very important to me that Molly and I experience learning outside and in the kitchen, my two favorite places.

Today we picked apples, made apple prints (slicing apples and using them like stamps with paint), and then made two apple pies.

The apple prints look a lot like hearts.

Apple pies with oat crumble topping.

Portland, OR:: We’ve been packing and cleaning and “moving” all of our stuff for the last few days. I’m tired. My body aches today. This morning I’m sitting on the floor in our old home gearing up to clean the oven. It’s the last thing that needs deep cleaning in our place. I can’t wait until it’s finished.

Every time we move we say it should be the last time, and yet we continue to move. Since John and I have been married (7 years this November) we will have moved our stuff 8 times! This is our 9th! I hope our resting place after this journey is a place we can call home for a long time.

A little on stuff: Stuff is everything that you need and think you need. Most Americans have much more than we actually need. There’s a book called Material World that documents families from all around the world with all of their earthly possessions in front of their home with them. It’s dramatic and tells an interesting story about what we think we need. I felt like this on Friday. Almost everything we owned was out in front of our house before we played trailer Tetris (making it all fit just right, thanks Jon R.). There was just so much! I hope we develop lasting habits over the next year regarding stuff and learn to live with a lot less. But even if we settle into a more permanent home next time I don’t want to keep accumulating stuff. We just don’t need that much.

As for today, we turn in our keys and make our final drive with all of our stuff to John’s parents’ home in Keizer, OR. They have been extremely generous letting us borrow their van, watching Molly and providing us with a room in their home to live for the next month. (Thank you!) The emotions are starting to catch up with me too. I had a good little cry yesterday and I’m sure I have a few in store for today and tomorrow. I love you Portland. I love you my dear Portland friends.

(I put moving in quotations because we’re not really moving in the traditional sense. I had to pack all of our stuff into three different categories: 1) the next 5 months, 2) the following 9-11 months on the road, and 3) long-term storage. I’m happy to say we have everything we need for the next 5 months in 3 suitcases and two bins. But John’s books deserve a dedicated post. He has over 50 boxes of books in storage and 7 boxes of books he wants to bring on our trip…all “essential.” I’ve asked him to narrow it down to 3 or less. We’ll see. He’ll need some encouragement from everyone I think.)

Portland, OR :: My dear friend got married yesterday. I was so excited for her wedding and not just because I would get to wear a dress, boots and dance in a barn. I’m excited for her because these two wonderful people have found in each other a partnership and love that makes my heart swell. Ever since I got married to John I’ve been a big fan of marriage. A lot of my friends are weary of marriage these days. They want the public, committed relationship but “marriage” scares them. This is understandable since so many of our parents have not had successful marriages/relationships and the odds are against us. If I’ve learned two things about marriage they are: it takes a lot of work and humility. You have to work everyday and it’s not easy work, you have to remain humble while working so hard. I get excited when my friends are curious about marriage. I love to share my story. John and I don’t have the “perfect” marriage (what ever that is?), but we are working on our relationship and striving to have a strong and loving partnership for life.

On Friday I was honored to cut my friend’s hair, the day before her wedding. Normally this is something I would do with trembling hands. There is a lot of pressure on the bride to look “perfect.” But my experience was full of grace and encouragement. She and her husband are some of the least judging people I know, so if my not-professional haircut was not perfect, it was going to be forgiven. While I cut her hair she shared with me a story about her life partner. It was about putting others first, turning the other cheek and sacrifice. Her partner acts out loving one’s enemy daily and sometimes at the risk of his own life. He is not foolish, but he is willing to put himself out so that others may be protected, loved, fed, cared for, healed and acknowledged.

This sounds noble and admirable but it also sounds scary. What about the other person in the relationship? How do you commit your life to someone knowing that they will sacrifice coming home to you if it means they will protect their enemy? Many people expect that their spouse will fight their enemy to protect their home. It seems backward, but this kind of love is what has attracted the two of them together. For me it was a fresh reminder of the kind of love I desire for those around me.

We proceeded to talk about how important it is then to find sacred time with your partner, to serve them and put them before yourself. Again, work and humility. I hope John and I have a lot of life to live together. I think we can get closer to this – better at loving our neighbor, better at loving our enemy and better at loving each other. This next year will probably prove to be the most challenging and offering the most potential for these lessons. We’ll need prayers, encouragement and support from our friends and family.

I am thankful for intimate times like this with soul-friends.
It gives me hope and courage.
I am inspired.
Thank you.

Portland, Oregon :: John and I go in circles on this topic when we talk about how this trip will work.  Should we do a trailer and truck combo?  An RV with small car towed behind?  Or a camper van?

I’m 98% sure I would prefer the trailer/truck combo.

Pros: “space” of our own, flexibility to drop off the trailer and drive the truck with relative ease, potentially less work, John could drop off the trailer with me and Molly while he chases down people to interview for his book.

Cons: it could be long and therefore difficult to maneuver through a city, some people say hard to drive

Yesterday John brought up the camper van idea again.  I’m not sure we could survive the whole year in this.  We would be relying on people to open their homes all of the time (which I originally thought would be the best experience).

Pros: very low cost, more compact, easy to maneuver, rely on others more.

Cons: SMALL space, no toilet (unless we got a port-a-potty), no fridge (likely), we would always be driving our “home,” rely on others more.

Some people are hard-core RV fanatics.  They swear that this is the way to go.  Get a small-ish RV and pull a small car behind.

Pros: small home on wheels ready to go, leave the RV and drive car around town

Cons: BIG, most RVs require a lot of work, might be difficult to maneuver through a city, more challenging to find free/cheap repair help for an RV than a truck.

Maybe we’ll just join the Living Small Tour

Please share your thoughts and experience with us!

Portland, OR :: Yesterday marked the first major step in our grand adventure.  We had a yard sale and sold “everything.”  It turns out we did not really sell everything – I walked back inside the house when the event was cleaned up and realized we have a lot more that can go, but it was a great first step.

For those of you who do not know why we had this yard sale let me take a few steps back and explain why we need to sell “everything.”

Over the last 20 months John and I have been meeting regularly with our two best friends, Kristialyn and Dave.  Our plan was to merge our lives and become neighbors, living in very close community with each other.  We considered co-housing (living in the same house), buying/renting a duplex together, buying a farm, living in yurts on some rural property, moving into parents’ homes, almost everything except for living on a boat (although that would have been a fun discussion, right Kristialyn?).

We desire to live together in a way where we can support each other’s dreams and needs, encourage our spiritual growth, raise curious children, and practice living a life closely connected to the land (on a farm of sorts).  Through our journey exploring options and building stronger relationships our plans for the future were refined and narrowed, we were even able to make a list of our five must-haves.  Our five must-haves were initally focused in a small town in California because I “needed” more sunshine.  We committed ourselves to praying for these five things to become a reality.  Within two weeks exciting opportunities presented themselves. But none of those opportunities were in that small California town. So we expanded our list to ten must-haves and left the location open.  That’s when things got tricky.  I realized three things: 1) God can really provide for us the right place (something I might have doubted), 2) I can go anywhere (also something I doubted), and 3) the time when we realize this dream might not happen right away (definitely something I doubted I would feel comfortable with).

As we began to pray more specifically and truly seek consensus between the four of us we realized that staying within the Portland area might be the best option for now.  And that’s when the idea for this trip came upon John in a flash of inspiration.  It was like we were finally content with where we were and then, BAM!  Inspiration!

John came to me and asked if I wanted to travel around the country with him and Molly for year.  If you know John, you know he’s the kind of person who comes to me regularly (daily or twice daily) with BIG ideas.  Sometimes so big I just laugh, other times I just stand there speechless.  This time I paused and said, “Maybe, let me think about it,” something I never say.  John didn’t quite know what to do.  I think he had a few rebuttals planned, but never had to use them.  The next day I told him I thought it was just the right idea for us and at just the right time.  This surprised me because only five days before we were going to buy a house with D & K.

After we all experienced a little bit of whiplash it was clear (something that is hard to put into words) that this trip was the best thing for our family.  We all had peace.  When peace comes and settles in on you I’ve learned it’s important to accept it and sit still for a while.  Let it in and breathe.  Don’t try to shake it, embrace it.

So we did.  And after much discussion with D & K it was clear that our plans to live in close community with each other would be better achieved after this journey.  John and I have been living with such opposite schedules for so long, Molly being introduced to our family and Dave and Kristialyn still learning each other after being married for less than two years.

John and I have a tendency to make plans and change direction easily.  This has been a source of frustration for others and ourselves, but I also think it’s a gift that will be welcomed one day.  For now we wondered when this plan would be ditched for the next.  Every day for the first three weeks John asked me, “How are you feeling about our trip?”  I always responded, “good” or “excited” or “confident.”  I asked him the same question back and he always had the same responses as me.  He was confused, “Are we really going to do this?”

(A little more back-story: John and I have had credit card debt since our honeymoon almost seven years ago.  It has been an oppressing force and we have worked hard to free ourselves of it.  This has only recently happened when we reevaluated our lives and put our values first in how we were going to live.  I gave notice as a manager at Starbucks, cut back on my hours, we made more time for our family to be together and started tithing within our community.  We chose to live Kingdom values* first instead of our society’s values.  Today, we have zero credit card debt and only trace amounts of other debt!  We are grateful and thankful for our friends and family who have encouraged us, prayed for us and helped us realize this goal.  We have learned the truth about the spiritual connectedness between money, debt, and oppression.  This is a truth we will still have to work through but there is light at the end of the tunnel and we are becoming freer each day! Praise God!)

So, are we really going to do this trip?  “Yes!”  And we are able to do this because we are becoming freer, we are supported by a loving and generous community, our family and parents supports us and because now is the time!  Here we are sorting through all of our worldly possessions and deciding what is replaceable and what is not, what can we sell, what should we store and what needs to come on the road with us.  What are we going to do on the road?  How will Molly respond to this?  Who will we see?  Who will we meet?  How will we document this journey?  And how will we find ways to share what we’ve learned about community…but most importantly, what will we learn about God, community and how will this impact our lives and those to whom we return home?

That being said, we had a major yard sale on Saturday. People were able to give us donations toward our trailer fund.  We were blessed by so many people and encouraged by everyone! We made well over $900 and have the first major chunk of cash we need to buy a trailer and truck to haul our family across the country and back a few times over the next 15 months!

We are excited to share our journey with everyone through this blog and many other forms of digital connections (Facebook, Skype, Twitter, Email, etc…).  I will be focusing most of my posts on community, hospitality, food, farms and family.  John will be documenting our journey and his pilgrimage through Evangelical America.  Check on us, encourage us, challenge us, and love us.

Here we go!!!

*Kingdom values: this is something we started talking about a while back.  As Christians we talk about the Kingdom of God.  It’s mentioned a lot in the Bible.  We have a home church here in Portland and we’ve tried to understand what the Kingdom of God is.  Is it a future state or present?  We have come to the conclusion that it’s a present state that one can live in today on earth (Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven).  The Kingdom of God values very different things than our current society.  We’ve learned a lot about this through books like: The Biblical Vision of Sabbath Economics by Ched Myers and Body Politics – Five Practices of the Christian Community Before the Watching World by John Howard Yoder.