Sustainable Change

In June, my husband and I closed on our first home.  It's estimated to be the second oldest home in Mooresville and was built in approximately 1875.  The gentleman we purchased it from had lived there for nearly 40 years before he and his wife could no longer live here by themselves.  While when we initially looked at this home there wasn't this solid idea that we would want to spend the rest of our lives here that idea seems to be taking root as my husband and I make changes to our personal lives and our family culture that make us look at life more intentionally.  

In today's society it seems to be the norm rather than the exception for couples to have a starter home and then the dream home.  I think I really first started to notice our trend away from normal when I looked at Dustin one day and made the statement "I want to live in our house longer that the last couple".  Making that statement has made me more conscious of some personal choices that we have started to make in our lives with the idea of creating margin in our life for sustainable change.

Just this morning I was reading an article by Michelle Brock, When Justice Becomes Trendy.  As someone who was passionate about doing her part to end sex trafficking before it became the in thing to do, she has taken the approach of looking toward a future when the next big trend will come along and her cause will be discarded by the wayside by everyone, but those truly invested.  

Her article has had me evaluating how we as a family do things and oddly, I found it encouraging.  I realized that we've been investing in making life changes that will make living in those changes doable even after the trendiness goes away.

The first book I completed in my personal reading challenge for 2015 was a book by Margot Starbuck titled Small Things With Great Love.  One of the appendixes in the book included a list ways that her readers could begin to make intentional choices about how they spend their money by giving tools to evaluate businesses based on their environmental impact, their free trade practices, etc.  As we have made it through the first half of the year I now find myself evaluating how we've done.  The truth while I know there is always room to improve, I'm extremely happy with the habits we as a family have begun.  We shop local much more than we did in January.  We default to the question of can we get it used before running to buy the shiny brand new version.  I've begun to purchase through companies such as ePantry and invest in products from companies such as Seventh Generation.  

As I evaluate those extremely slow changes we've been making, after reading this 2013 article by Michelle Brock, I realize that this year has definitely been a year of change for our family, but we've been making intentional choices to make sure that our change that is sustainable.  Change that isn't dependent on trends, but change that we believe in enough to change not just our lifestyle, but our way of thinking.