The RV Life Turns One

One year ago today, I piled the kids and the pets back in the car (and what I considered to be as much stuff as could reasonably fit in an RV) and drove eight hours south to rejoin the Man and begin our RV adventure. I had already been thinking about the one year mark as we celebrated our last holiday of the year for the first time in the RV and as we rounded the corner on birthday week and the new year, but there was something about realizing that today was the day that made me stop and think about where we've been and where we are now.

Last year: the whole crew ready to be reunited with Major Dad

Last year, after a full day of driving and unpacking and trying to get prepped for the twins' birthday, it was raining, just like tonight. And I laid in bed next to the Man and thought how lovely a sound it was even though the reason we were living in an RV in the first place was because of a very, very big rain storm two and a half months earlier. Last year, I didn't know how the adjustment period of small space, disaster zone living would go, whether we would all be stir crazy in a month, if our risk would be worth it. Last year, everything outside the RV was dead and broken.

This year, it's hard to know where to start with the differences. Yes, things are still broken--but there is also healing, mending, rebuilding. And I think we've done pretty well with not going insane together--though I have done an inordinate amount of yelling to get the kids to clean up their incredibly tiny space. The kids are taller, faster, smarter. They have achieved things this year that I never would've thought possible. Sure, some goals had to be set aside (I can't put a piano in an RV, for one), but others have been exceeded (Littles taught himself guitar; the kids have a vegetable garden with actual vegetables in it; nobody has been eaten by an alligator or drowned in the bayou). And it's been a year when I've challenged myself as a person and grown too. Would I have done that if our world hadn't first been upended? I don't know.

We were asked early on in the year, multiple times in fact, what our long term plan was for housing. Because, of course, nobody in their right mind would keep five kids and three pets in an RV (and homeschool), but I look back at this year and see only blessings. Not deprivation. Not suffering. Not want. We have learned again to redefine our needs and seen that, in truth, we need far less than even what we have right now.

I've also seen that when we lose some of the things we thought we needed, an opportunity opens to fill that empty space with growth. Instead of keeping a nice, big house clean, I've had more opportunity to write. Because we need space to spread out every now and then, we've gotten out and done more things with friends this year, explored new haunts, played outside. When there isn't enough room to slam a door in someone's face and tell them to leave you alone while you sulk in your bedroom, you learn to deal with conflict differently.

Our family doesn't end this year saintly martyrs, but we do walk away learning that while we have often reached our own limits, we have not yet reached the limits of God's goodness and patience towards us. And we finish out the year having welcomed new challenges too, like guitar and gardening, teaching and trying tough things, blessing others when we feel that we don't have much to offer (and allowing ourselves to be blessed in turn) and, of course, baking Christmas goodies for an entire squadron in a tiny RV kitchen.

And on top of all of that, because we have awesomely adventurous RV neighbors, the kids also got to learn how to kayak.

Which, in my opinion, is something that they'll never regret--even if they had to share a room with each other for a year and a half and sacrifice any kind of personal space in order to get there.

Here's to one year--and not being ready, quite yet, to light the RV on fire and give it a Viking burial in the bayou.