Where we come from...(Matt)

Well, several people have asked about where we came from, who we are, and why we wanted to change so badly...and since Carolyn is asleep, I'll go first.

It all started one cold New Jersey day...just kidding, I'm not going to give a total autobiography, just a small glimpse. (I'll save the rest for my next book) I was born into a middle class family in rural New Jersey (yes there are rural parts) and grew up as most middle class kids do. I had everything I needed plus some until I was in my teens. By then, my family had come into a little more money through hard work a dumb luck, so I finished out high school in relative wealth. I went (more like...was forced) to college in New York and studied Music, then History. It was there that I met the most beautiful and wonderful woman in the world and quickly asked her to marry me, but before the nuptials, I slipped out into the world for almost a year as a touring Sound Engineer.

I came back from a forty city tour and quickly married Carolyn. We started out living in New Jersey but decided that there was more adventure out West, so we loaded the U-haul and left our lucrative jobs for the browner pastures of California. The "job" I had lined up in Calfornia fell through while I drove across the country, so we spent the next three months looking for work. I finally found a job in construction and was three years into a new career when I made a sudden right turn and became a youth pastor.

Five years later, I was worn out, fed up, distraught with apparent disconnect of what Jesus asked us to do from what the church (at large) was actually doing in this world, so I hung up the vocational ministry hat and went back into construction.

My life has been filled with times of much and spiced with times of little, but I never failed to realize that the more I had, the less I lived...so after leaving vocational ministry and starting over, I decided that I needed to break the cycle and "live" to the fullest all the time. Thus this journey.

Some have asked about our living arrangements. This is our first home, but it is smaller than our last three apartments. This was slightly by choice, but mostly the due to the surge in California real estate over the past ten years. We never had the money or credit to buy before, but when I got a new job we were able to swing it and this was the first house that really fit. Our families thought we were nuts to get something so small, but we used the, "find us something better for this price," argument skillfully enough that they left us alone long enough to sign the loan. Before we did, Carolyn and I both decided that we would do everything possible to make this a permanent home, not a stopping point to something bigger. So this journey has been brewing in my mind for a while.

What I have realized about myself, is that I often choose things to make me happy. When I should be happy with or without things. Having dose not equate joy, but I often appraoch life as if it does. So that is what I am seeking to change through this journey. So far, I have found that this thinking is so inate in me that I cannot make changes slowly, I need to thrust them upon myself so they don't fall by the wayside. So if my approach seems radical or forced...it is by personal necessity. Also, I think best while writing, so many of my posts are realy soul exploration.

I hope that gives you a better understanding of who I am, where I came from and why I want to change. If I missed anything, feel free to ask.