Moving versus Giving Children Roots


Goodness, we have moved so many times over the past few years. Today is our closing day, once again. I’m reflecting about how not even one year ago, we were sitting in a lawyer’s office signing papers for our cabin. And now today, we will be doing the same thing. This time we will be at our realtor’s office following social distancing protocols. How strange!

Ladies, I am ready to give my children roots. While making bold moves to get our finances in order, I feel like all we’ve done is move, move, move. At first, it felt like an adventure. But now, I’m tired. Our younger guys are still excited by the prospect of it all, but some of our older ones are over it.

Quite frankly, I’m over it. We weren’t going to do this yet, but the pandemic caused us to rethink things. We feel like if we can do this one more time, hopefully we will be settled for awhile. The price is right, it has five acres for gardens and animals, the largest kitchen our family of eleven has ever seen, and over 2000 square feet of unfinished basement space. Oh, and it’s also a shade of pink with cactuses in the North Georgia Mountains. It needs a new roof among many other things, but we are confident we can make it our own if we put in the work.

How do you decide when it is time to move or to put down roots? With the Lord’s help, we’ve made this decision time and time again since 2017. And it seems like the right answer has been “move” for awhile. We are hoping “roots” will win out this time, though. That is unless something like the end of the world sends us off grid, ha!

As a homeschooling family, moving has been easier for us than for some. It made sense when we were working hard to get out of debt. And when we decided we wanted to move back to Georgia to raise our family (just not back to metro Atlanta), it wasn’t too difficult. Our children still left friends though, and that was tough.

Another pro is that moving can be a great adventure that draws your family together. While living in South Carolina, our older girls pretty much just had each other as far as friends go. I think they grew closer during this time. Moving creates memories that will last a lifetime.

At the same time, it is hard to leave places where those memories were created. Y’all, I am ready to be able to taste the fruit off of the trees we plant. I’m ready to make memories in a home that we will stay in. Lord willing, this home will check those boxes for us.

We want to give our children roots now. At the same time, we understand that this world is not our home, and the perfect location and home doesn’t exist. Sometimes, moving is the right choice for your family even if your children are hesitant. Don’t feel bad about that! While finances aren’t everything, if we wouldn’t have moved, our journey to debt freedom would have looked very different.

So hurray for closing day! By this afternoon I should be knee deep in scrubbing cabinets and sweeping cobwebs from the rafters. And I’m super excited about it!


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