Go West Young Man

"...Go West, young man, go West and grow up with the country." - popularized by Horace Greeley


I am not so young anymore, but I feel it and my sons are young!

As you can probably tell from earlier posts Shannon and I have long had a dream of moving to Colorado, and I don't mean to Denver or other areas in the front range, but to a place where the mountains touch the sky, the elk and bear still run wild and the snow falls deep! We have spent the last three years praying about moving to Colorado, at first it was simply because we loved the scenery and the weather; however over those three years the Lord revealed to us exactly what was truly in our hearts.

God's favor was upon me when I had three sons, each of my sons has their own personality and tastes but they are all boy. They love to run, wrestle, explore, and be dangerous. As I have grown older and watched my boys get bigger I began to realize that all my dreams, anything that I wanted to accomplish was trumped by what legacy I would leave in my sons. Whatever in life I would do, whether be someone famous, make a lot of money, or just be the ordinary person that somehow makes their way through life succumbing to the culture all of those things would eventually be forgotten. The one thing that would not be forgotten is the legacy that I leave with my sons. That starts out with loving my wife. (That could be a whole other post in and of itself) It also starts with being actively involved in my sons' lives. Now I can do those things regardless of where I live. So much of what we pass to our children though is through how we live, there is the saying that "much more is caught than taught" and that is the truth.

What the Lord has so carefully revealed to us about ourselves is that we must go west so that we can learn to live again, out of the safety of the familiar, out on our own if you will. We are blazing a new trail that will have repercussions for many generations on my family, on my sons, on their, children, and on their children's children. You get my point. Living out there where we can all explore together, live in the unfamiliar together, my boys will get a chance to "catch" how to live amongst the challenges, amongst those mountains that call a young man to reach the top, the white water rivers that dare us to ride them if you can and after all that to sit quietly in the solitude of it all and pray together. Well one might say that those challenges exist wherever you live, they do; however it is a call to my heart that only the Lord truly understands. Some people are awe inspired by the majesty of a thunderstorm, some by the intricacies of a flower, I am awe inspired by the mountains. Watch that scene at the beginning of A River Runs Through It where the two young brothers are running in the mountains, some folks will through their cynicism and own hurting heart will trash it, but those that admit their brokenness and seek the awesomeness of God will be stirred. I was.

I don't expect anyone to truly understand the fullness of our move, read Wild At Heart by John Eldredge to catch a glimpse. We are truly heading on another great adventure, it won't be an easy one by any means. This moving journey so far has been filled with ups and downs, but the Lord constantly reminds me, Matt, "Don't miss the Journey". I am trying not to.

Exactly two weeks from today our house will be packed up and we will be on our way out west to settle in Leadville, CO. It is about 100 miles west of Denver nestled between the Sawatch Range and the Mosquito Range. On average it receives about 150 inches of snow each winter, has an average summer high of 71 degrees and averages 310 days of sunshine a year. Leadville sits at 10,200 feet above sea level.

We are very excited, albeit right now it is very surreal, we are also nervous and scared. It is very different from everything that we are familiar with. The Lord will see us through it. Don't miss the journey.