Core Truths

  From the moment we drove on the Blue Ridge Parkway in June 2018, we knew the mountains were calling our name. Sometime following our third trip to these mountains this past summer, I began following Blue Ridge Mountains hiking and waterfalls groups on social media. At that time, pursuing our dreams and moving to the mountains wasn’t even an option. We had a hefty mortgage and loads of student loan debt. We had just put in a pool. It was in these groups that I saw people actually hiked on the Blue Ridge Parkway during the winter months when the road is closed to traffic. I would always show Opal people’s posted pics in disbelief. I knew I wanted that to be us. I didn’t know how. I didn’t know when. But I knew I wanted to hike the snow-covered Parkway. Here we are just a few months later. We traded it all in and are now debt free. Today after church, we came home, bundled up, and headed to the Parkway. We took our traditional selfie with the National Park sign, and then we hiked on...

Twenty years ago today, we walked down that aisle and out of the church doors together, hand-in-hand, ready to start our new life together. All of our hopes and dreams waiting just on the other side of the lives we had previously known. We were young, eager, and excited, and while we didn’t have it all planned out, we had faith and we just knew. For many of those years, we held tightly to those hopes and dreams and so many plans. Much of what we dreamed about came true, much of what we worked towards happened, and much of what we had planned to do, we did. It has been a good life. One year ago today, at our anniversary dinner together, we did something we hadn’t done in years. We talked about new dreams, and new hopes, and new plans. We were now older (sometimes if feels like much older), hopefully wiser, and the things we wanted out of life had changed over the years. One year ago today, we sat at a bar table outside of the movie theater as we waited for our showtime. We probably soun...

And for us, what a very new year it is. New house, new town, new beginning. None of this is quite as new or quite as exciting as us starting this new year DEBT FREE! That’s right, we are rolling into 2021 without student loans, without car payments, without any other consumer debt. This is very new. So new, we have never experienced this ever before…ever. Our first New Year together as a married couple, we were already up to our eyeballs in student loans and car payments, and every year after that seemed to carry more debt with it than the year before. We never questioned what we were doing or when or how we would ever pay it all off. We never had a plan until February 2020. There were so many things we wanted to do, so much more in life we wanted to experience, but every time we put pen to paper, the monthly payments held us back from living life the way we wanted to live it. That’s when we started having our weekly budget meetings and really getting serious about digging our way out ...