Gratitude Muscles + 1-Year Anniversary of Our Decision to Settle Down

Stories of contentment + holy discontentment

My shower has amazing views. I prefer to shower during the day because the natural light is so peaceful, and I have a huge window at eye level that lets me gawk at our spectacular mountains while I lather and rinse.

A year ago, I was in my second year of living in an RV. In order to use my shower, I had to take my baby’s crib out first. Hot water (or any water at all) was not something I could always expect. Things were constantly breaking down because RV’s are made to be lightweight for occasional travel, not full-time, mostly-stationary use for a family of 7.

So you would expect that I would feel dramatically different in dramatically better circumstances, right? No, in fact, as I stepped into the shower and felt in awe of how blessed I am, I actually felt a very familiar feeling to what I felt when I stepped into the shower in the RV days. Somehow it used the same mental muscles. It stumped me for a second, then I realized: gratitude.

My goal when living in the RV was to develop radical gratitude. I wanted to feel spoiled, all the time. And—for most of the time—I did. (More on that at the bottom.) My childhood nickname was Eeyore because I have a special gift for pessimism. So when moving into the RV, I asked God to give me radical gratitude, and He did.

When I stepped into the RV shower, I would often feel overwhelmed by how amazing it was that we found an RV with a bathroom so big that we could store the baby’s crib in it. I would feel so grateful that we lived on my husband’s work property and some of his employees were like uncles to my kids. I was thrilled that our home was so small that it didn’t take long at all to clean. I felt grateful that we were saving so much money that I could be more loosey-goosey with my spending money and bought the Lush shampoos that smell so delightful.

When I look at my home now—a dream home, maybe a lifelong home, a rare jewel that seemed to be hidden just for us—I’ve felt concerned with myself for not feeling that different than I did in the RV. “Am I impossible to please? Am I not enjoying this home for what it is?” But what I really think happened is this: I was grateful then, and I’m grateful now.

I see this home as a gift. I saw my home in the RV as a gift. Peter and I have had “what if” talks about if the economy tanked and we had to downsize, and I got a little excited thinking about the benefits of a different house, too. Our tiny rented home would be a gift. (This is very unnatural for me to do so; like I said, this is a miracle from God.)

I still have a long way to go with my gratitude, but I realized just recently while taking a shower that gratitude is powerful stuff. It’s amazing.

And now for the second part of this story. Gratitude isn’t the same as toxic positivity; sometimes you need to say “This isn’t okay, and we need to make a change.” It’s a holy discontentment. That happened almost exactly a year ago, and I think the story is pretty cool.

Our Decision to Settle Down

On March 13, 2021, we embarked on a 3-month road trip. For most of our time in the RV, we were stationary on my husband’s work property, but the time came to use the RV for what it was meant to do and actually travel. Our first stop was Nashville, and as we drove through Chattanooga, I happened to be right behind my husband—which was unusual because we had to drive separately and make different stops—so it kind of felt like we were driving together. Some of the pear blossoms along the highway were in full bloom, and the Tennessee River took my breath away. I cried. It felt like we were passing up Home.

We then spent a month in Breckenridge, Colorado, a winter wonderland. On April 2nd, we left our RV at the campground and decided to stay in a little Fairfield Inn in Boulder, Colorado for two nights. It was a normal 2-star hotel, but it still felt like a dream compared to RV living. My active little baby loved crawling on the floor, and that made me feel more peaceful than I had in a long time. Now that the baby was crawling and he didn’t really have anywhere to go in the RV, he and I were both struggling. That season of life took a toll on my mental health.

At the hotel in Boulder, I remember journaling and just asking God to give me a home. I love travel, and hopping around gave me so much delight. And, as I wrote earlier, living in the RV was awesome and felt like one of the most self-realizing things I had ever done. I’m a minimalist at heart. But RV + crawling-baby life was not working, and we had been transient long enough to really just yearn for home.

I had a long list of cities to check out that might be a good long-term destination for us someday. Providence, Rhode Island. Burlington, Vermont. Maybe even The Line, Saudi Arabia. Boulder itself would’ve been in the running if the median home price wasn’t $975k. But I felt like we could look for the perfect city forever, and the time had come to just settle somewhere.

The next day, my husband and I talked about these things as we walked around Pearl Street and we looked for somewhere to eat lunch. Then we saw it at the same time and knew where we would eat lunch: The Yellow Deli. The Yellow Deli is run by a commune and religion (some would say cult 😬) that has the most delicious and affordable food grown from their own farms. The inside of the restaurant is folksy and homemade at every corner; it’s an absolutely unique experience, and this was our first time seeing a Yellow Deli outside of the restaurant/community where it all started: Chattanooga, TN.

Here are some pictures of the Yellow Deli in Chattanooga.

As we listened to the unique music and ordered the exact things we always ordered when we would visit Chattanooga, we talked about our happy memories in that city and how much we loved it. Then my husband suddenly said, “You know what? Let’s do it. Let’s move to Chattanooga this fall.” The kids applauded loudly. I was flabbergasted.
“Are you high?” I mouthed. (We were in Colorado, after all. You never know.)
Peter laughed. “I’ll figure it out with my business. It’s time to put our family first and settle down somewhere we love. Should we do it, guys?”
We all forgot we were in a restaurant for a moment and quite raucously agreed.

We had been flying by the seat of our pants for the first 10 months of our marriage, and it had been great, but now, for the first time, we actually made a plan.

And we were moved into our mountain house, only 15 minutes from the Chattanooga Yellow Deli, by July.

Thanks for reading!

Love, Hope

P.S. I continue to spend a lot of time creating Family Scripts; check it out if you haven’t already 😅

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