A lot of you know the story behind Serendipimoose and why I chose that name for my creative pursuits (first at serendipimoose.com where my design work lives), but I though it would be a good idea to retell it here for anyone who doesn’t know where the heck this ridiculous moniker came from.
It all started with a Tempest. Not the storm, my best friend, Laura Tempest. She moved to Alberta many years ago, and I’ve tried to make it a habit to come fly out and visit her for a few days at least once a year for, oh probably over ten years now. Every time I came out here it was like my soul relaxed. The closer we’d get to the mountains on our touristy treks (bless her, we must have driven to Banff every other trip) I’d get giddy and feel like part of me was home. In early 2017, I was out for a visit and was chatting with my husband on the phone and just said flippantly “I could SO live out here”. We were in the midst of beginning to think about moving closer to his job in Burlington, ON, as his current hour-plus commute along the QEW highway (think Mad Max but with more road rage and accidents) between our home in Vineland and the office was wearing heavily on him and meant that he was really only home to eat and sleep.
We didn’t want to leave our church family, that I’d grown up with and that Andrew had embraced when we were dating. We didn’t want to leave our actual family, or our semi-rural neighbourhood. But we knew God was making us restless for a reason, as I’m not one to not be content where I am and make it work. But all the properties we wanted (more than three bedrooms, a few acres of actual land) were well out of our price range, and the only properties in our range were condos or massive fix-er-uppers with no land, smack dab in cities. We are not city people.
So while we were on the phone a nation apart, he said “Well, start looking for houses, why not?” I stopped in my tracks and got that flutter. The one that says your origin story is starting. That this is not just a normal conversation.
I got home and we started praying and talking about what the next steps would look like. This is pre-Emily P. Freeman’s Next Right Thing, but we just decided “Ok, we are just going to do whatever God tells us to do next and not think about the step after that. Just one thing at a time, do our research, seek good counsel, and leave the unknowns and the uncontrollables to God.” With a six year old and a three year old, and a job I loved at a local paint your own pottery place, my mind was already quite full but I knew this wasn’t something we could ignore and live without exploring.
We talked to some people we trust. We pitched our infant idea to trusted older friends. We basically looked at a map of Alberta and decided that I was not moving unless I was living near mountains and I mean NEAR mountains, and Drew was pretty open to anything as long as we had a bit of land and it was within an hour of the Calgary airport for his work trips. We literally picked a town off Google maps based on airport proximity and topography (“does that look like a mountain?”) and started lurking property listings. We called the first real estate agent who had advertised a listing we liked, had a phone interview with her, decided we liked the cut of her jib, and away we went.
The big giant was Andrew’s job. “Hey so I’m just going to work solely remotely from home and move 2,000-plus kilometers away from the office” is not something you normally want to throw at your boss. Andrew met with the owner of the company and told him what we had in mind. His boss, and I still tear up thinking about it, said “Andrew, you’ve been here over twelve years and we know we can absolutely trust you. If you say this is what you need, we will make it work, you do what you need to do.” This was a gracious, encouraging, MASSIVE green light. No one else in this company had ever done this before, we were breaking new ground. The day he was at his meeting, I was at work. The pottery item I was fixing lettering on that day? Happened to be a mug with “love you to the mountains and back” on it.
We started meeting with realtors, listed the house, and started cleaning, staging, sorting, packing, and online house hunting. This was all in February 2017. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Laura had gotten herself affianced and the wedding was set for Mother’s Day weekend in May. We decided that since we were going to be out there for the wedding anyway, we might as well multitask and buy a house the same weekend. As one does.
So now we had a deadline. We sat down with the realtor selling our house and told her our tentative plan. Put the house on the market the week before we left for the wedding, and trust it would sell before we left so we knew what our budget would be when we looked at houses there. I think we took a few years off her life. However, the housing market in our area was insane (at that point, police were doing crowd control at some open houses not twenty minutes from us because of the insanely buyer-friendly market, and were selling for WELL over asking price in hours in some areas) so we knew we weren’t too much off the mark.
We were down to where God was either going to show up, or show us in a very devastating fashion that this was not where He was actually leading.
Up to this point we were still kind of looking at each other and going “are we nuts? Is this idea really from God or have we just made this up in some crazy frenzy?” I hate change. I abhor it. Even good change. My life from childhood on has been full of major, massive, life changes that I’d grown to dread. Uncertainty is my kryptonite. So the peace I had about this complete upheaval was nothing short of holy and NOT of me. We checked ourselves at each step. We evaluated our motives. We prayed. We asked people. And while there were good questions raised, there was nothing that stopped us in our tracks or scared us.
May arrived. Our house listed on a Thursday, it sold the following Tuesday before the wedding weekend, for just a squeak under asking. Grandparents took kids for a wonderful weekend without Mom and Dad to cramp their style. Andrew and I packed our wedding gear, and our gnome, Albert, and our squeaky new house budget stats, and hit the airport. After a wonderful weekend being a bridesmaid with friends that have been family really, for my entire life, we packed up and drove through the mountains from Caroline up to Nordegg and down the Icefields to Banff and on to Bragg Creek (not seeing a moose the entire six hour trip, mind you.)
We drove through town and stopped at the Heart of Bragg Creek coffee shop to Facetime the kids and re-caffeinate, then found our Air BnB and decided to take the list of properties our realtor had sent us that she was showing us the next day, Monday, and do some drive bys. We started out, drove by a few places that didn’t really sing to us at all, and Andrew was now clearly on edge. “What if this is not where we are supposed to be? How could we possibly have picked the right town the way we did? Maybe we should be looking more south or closer to Calgary…” This was the moment the first doubt sank in.
We were driving in West Bragg, and my mind was now racing at Andrew’s fears. “God, if this is where you have led us, if we haven’t misinterpreted what we thought was your voice, we just need a nudge. We know we don’t trust as much as we should, but we desperately want to do what you want us to, and we want your will in this. We haven’t seen a moose this ENTIRE trip, and I know by now, we should have. Maybe, just send us some encouragement. Just something to let us know we are right where you want us.”
We turned onto the next road. We started driving. There is a flash beside Andrew’s side of the car. Oh look, a moose. OH LOOK, A MOOSE!!! Cue me instantly bursting into tears next to a bewildered husband who has no idea what I’ve just prayed, and wonders why the sight of a moose is making me weep. He pulls over, I start laughing while crying (not at all terrifying) and grab my camera and we get out and enjoy this lovely creature casually sauntering across the roadway. I am grinning like a fiend at this point and explain to Drew why this animal is wreaking such emotion from me. He just smiles, shakes his head, knowing that once I’ve caught a God-incidence (no coincidence here), he’s along for the ride.
We proceed on about a kilometer down the road to the next house on the list. Looking from the road all we can see is a curving driveway down into tall firs, and a splash of yellow and white. It’s the house that’s a bit out of our price range anyway, and we are just going to see it because I think it’s interesting and why not.
We ended our day with a fantastic dinner at the Bavarian back in the hamlet (my Mother’s Day date!) and then settle down back at the Air BnB to try and get some rest before the house hunting begins in earnest Monday morning.