Hitting the Reset Button

Here I am again. A blonde girl from Georgia sitting in a South American capital city, struggling to keep up with processing everything she sees.  It’s a situation similar to what I faced nine years ago, when I left my home in Birmingham, Alabama to pursue graduate studies in Caracas, Venezuela.

In August 2003, I was 22 years old. I’d just finished college and wanted to see the world. I went to Caracas without knowing anyone, yet never looked back on what I was leaving  behind.  In July 2012, I am 31, and have a husband and two young daughters. We knew what to expect and had family waiting in Bogotá.  But the anticipation of knowing what lay ahead brought heavy realization of what was being left behind.  

In both situations, the ultimate choice to leave was mine. In both situations, the logic seemed strange to outsiders. In both situations, O knew this was the right thing to do.  This time, the man I love came with me.  This time, the choice was more difficult to make. The stakes are higher, but the reward is greater. 

We arrived in Bogotá last Monday, weary from our red-eye flight from Houston but happy to know that we were finally moving forward with our life.  This decision has been a long time coming.  Experiencing the worst year of our lives and the birth of our second child, my husband Juan Carlos and I knew something had to change.

We aren’t sure exactly when it happened, but sometime five or six years into our marriage, the neat little world we’d built for ourselves started to fall apart.  We both had important jobs in respectable companies and, as a result, lived in a nice house in a great city. Our beautiful toddler, Catalina, went to a great preschool and had more than everything she needed to be happy and healthy.  Unfortunately, our drive to excel in our jobs, to be productive all the time and to and provide for our daughter led to workaholism that left everything out of balance. We stayed long hours at the office and came  home exhausted. We stopped taking vacations because we “couldn’t get away.” When we were physically present, our minds were elsewhere. We paid more attention to emails than to each other, even when we were supposed to be having “family time.” I remember pushing Catalina on the swing while looking something up on the iPhone. The two-year-old turned her head around and said, “Mommy, put your phone in your pocket and play with me.”

Finally a series of personal and professional struggles, both in our lives and others, forced us to reexamine our priorities and to rebuild our lives with the proper foundation.

We started to heed instructions given by our pastor, Kerry Shook, who said to “be all there” and to focus on relationships more than accomplishments.  We learned from our  Bible study friends that it is possible to honor God with our jobs, to work with all our heart without losing our souls in the process.

When I was seven months pregnant with our daughter Gabriela, Juan Carlos and I took a quick vacation by ourselves. During the trip, we wrote a vision for our family,  which included functioning as a united team, living with an attitude of thankfulness and service and maintaining a healthy home environment characterized by communication, understanding and acceptance. We committed to live out that vision, whatever the cost.

Seven months later, Juan Carlos resigned from his well-paying 70+ hour-per-week job at an oil company and committed to join his father’s consulting business in Bogotá, Colombia.  The change would allow Juan Carlos to manage his own schedule, spend more time at home and be closer to his parents that he left behind when he left 12 years earlier. It would give the girls a  chance to spend time with their Colombian relatives, to experience a new culture and to speak Spanish fluently. I would have the opportunity to live in the same city as my sister Abby, who works in Bogotá as a missionary. We hadn’t lived in the same city for 13 years.

A move to Bogotá would also bring some sacrifices. We would leave our beautiful home in The Woodlands, Texas, a comfortable community 25 miles north of Houston. We would give up wide roads, ample parking spaces, efficient government services and Walmart.  We would leave good friends and my parents, who moved to The Woodlands to be closer to us and had an incredibly special relationship with the girls. I would leave behind a successful career in public health and emergency preparedness and a professional network that I had been building the past six years.

But throughout the weighing pros and cons, Bogotá always won. The move gave all of us a chance to hit the reset button, to restructure our professional, family and spiritual lives and to align them better with our family vision.  Juan Carlos would be working for himself. Starting a new company, in a new city would provide a great opportunity to work as a united team.  Living in a developing country would provide plenty of opportunities to serve others and to be thankful for all that we have been given. Spending more time at home and managing our own work schedules would help us to build a better home environment and to communicate better. 

The biggest concern Juan Carlos had about the move was how happy I would be in Colombia. I had a good career in the US. My parents were close, and I lived comfortably with all the conveniences I needed. But no matter how great the temporary sacrifices would be, I knew this was the right decision for all of us. 

The moment we decided to make the move, doors began to open. Juan Carlos’s dad became deluged with contracts, though he didn’t solicit a single one. I started to get a sense of release at my job as well. I finished some major projects, delegated responsibilities to others and felt my time with the company was coming to a close. Our closest friends, from Bible study, applauded our decision and supported us along the way. One of the women works as a property manager, and she offered to take care of our house if we leased it while we were away. Her husband runs his own business and told us continually that deciding to work for himself was the best decision he ever made. During our time of transition, the other couple left their jobs and started a new business and began the process of selling their house and relocating. The parallels in each our of lives were amazing, and they helped us all grow together.

My company was supportive of my resignation, and they allowed me to work through July 6. That gave the opportunity for me to transition responsibilities and have insurance coverage for the family through the end of the month.  We decided to lease our house, and put it on the free online classifieds section for our area.  The first couple to inquire about the house ended up leasing it, and they moved in on July 1. Best of all, they wanted the house furnished, so we didn’t have to worry about selling or shipping furniture. We sold our cars  quickly as well and were relieved to not leave them as a burden for my parents to bear after we left. My parents were there for us while we were houseless and carless. They shared their vehicles and their upstairs with us, and we had a temporary home with them during our last three weeks in the United States.

Now we’re spending three weeks with Juan Carlos’s parents. They’ve graciously given us their 3-bedroom condominium in the northern part of Bogotá, and they will move to another building a few blocks away. We’re all staying together until their new place is ready, and, while it’s a little crowded in here sometimes, it is great for us to have help with the girls. The fact that our shipment was delayed a month has turned out to be a blessing. There wouldn’t be space for people if we had 250 cubic feet of clothes, toys and personal belongings stuffed in here. 

Hitting the reset button has not been easy. There have been plenty of hassles and heartaches, and there will be more to come. But in spite of the struggles, I have a great feeling that we’re doing the right thing.  Starting over is hard, but it’s also liberating. It’s easiest to paint a picture of your life when you’re starting with a new sheet of paper.

I’m reminded of the great passage from Isaiah 43:18-19.

“Forget the former things;
    do not dwell on the past.
19 See, I am doing a new thing!
    Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
    and streams in the wasteland.”

We look forward to seeing what this “new thing” brings for us. We don’t know how long we’ll be here or what is in store for us. But we’re in this together, and that’s all that matters. We truly are blessed.