OUR LIFE IS IN AN 8x10

As I pulled away from our 8x10 storage unit in Southern California for the last time, I had this incredible sense of freedom capped off with a bit of anxiety. I felt like my entire life, or the last five years at least, was locked up in this tiny cement room not to be opened for a year at minimum. I felt sad for our stuff. It was time for our family to leave the only life we knew as a family and head for the Big Sky. In the first hour of a 23 hour drive, it occurred to me that my life indeed was not left in that little 8x10, contrary to what the ideals of the "American Dream" would have us believe. For almost about 28 of my 29 years of life, I thought the underlying goals for every American was to 1. own a big home for your large family 2. in a nice neighborhood 3. with a great church and perfect schools 4. and drink coffee in the morning while reading the newspaper on the front porch where it never rains. I am not sure if it was a change of heart from God to prepare me for the next phase of life, but I know that those ideals now hold the weight of a paper clip in my life. Someone once challenged me to stop trying to live the American Dream and go out and live the Kingdom dream. Stop trying to collect stuff and start collecting friends for Jesus. So here goes. With all of our stuff crammed into an 8x10 (half of which I now feel like I don't even need), we are in phase one of living out the Kingdom dream.