But There's Nothing to Do There

When Daryl and I got married, he was in the Air Force and planning to get out when his stint was completed.  We only had 9 months until then.  We had no idea where we would go when that time was up.  We didn't even talk about it much!

We were both pretty "in the here and now" people at that stage of our lives, that is for sure.  Then an opportunity presented itself.  Daryl's aunt on his father's side had put her business up for sale, as she wanted to retire.  Daryl's parent told us about it and offered to be partners with us in the business - they would be the capital, and we'd be the labor.  We had no other offers or ideas, so we agreed to the offer.


When Daryl and I talked about where we would live as we ran the drapery business, we talked about how we could never live in such a small town as Lynden - there would be nothing to do there!  We had both grown up in Seattle and were used to having tons of things to do and see all around us.  Lynden didn't even have a movie theater or a fast food joint!  We decided we'd look around Bellingham for a place to rent, otherwise we'd probably go crazy living in such a tiny town.

Our first home...not exactly a beauty, but it served us well.

We'll, God had other ideas for us.  Every place we found in the want ads for rent in Bellingham, was too much for our budget!  So we ended up looking around Lynden and found a cozy (that means small in realtor language) little old house to rent for just $200/mo (I think?).  It had two bedrooms (one the size of a closet and the other not much bigger), a cozy living room and a kitchen/dining room that just fit a table for 2.  The bathroom had been an add-on/remodel as the house was built before there was indoor bathrooms!  It also had a porch for a washer and dryer, and later we were able to put a little chest freezer there too.  It wasn't perfect, but it suited out needs - cheap rent and not terribly far from work.

Our living room and dining room.
Love that paneling!

Our landlords lived just across the alleyway, and Daryl's grandmother lived in the apartment next door.  We ended up being friends with our landlords (they had two very cute and sweet little girls) and learned a lot from them - like running a successful business, crocheting baby booties and such.

Our plans for doing things like movies and recreational activities never really materialized.  I was a couple months pregnant when we moved, and running a business took most of our energy.  But that wasn't a bad thing as we really had no money for doing all the things we used to do before, and after Jeremy was born it didn't get any better!

Looking back through the years, God used that business to bring us to a place we would have never gone voluntarily.  But we have loved living up here.  We went from city kids aghast at the thought of living in a town without a movie theater, fast food joint (Lynden now has several fast food joints, but we don't live there anymore, it's too big of a town for us!) or decent shopping mall , to eventually living on wooded acreage, baking our own bread, dabbling in raising animals, and having more children than is socially acceptable. We even made friends almost right from the start that led us to consider homeschooling.

We saw living up here as a temporary situation to give us a leg up in the world, but God used it to draw us out of the big city, live like everybody else mentality.  He used it to bless us beyond our wildest dreams!