It’s official.  I have retired from my “day job”.

My journey so far has definitely been full of twists and turns, but this is a pretty major turning of the page for me.

My husband’s care giving needs have increased and the strain of remotely monitoring him from my workplace, while also trying to perform my job, manage our household, and raise two of our children, became too much for me to manage.

I have to say, once again, this isn’t how I would have planned things.

And . . . once again . . . I’m practicing that thing about trust.

I actually love retirement so far . . . being able to take care of my family without the stress of taking time off work . . . having time to manage so many responsibilities which were piling up in corners and closets around the house . . . shopping weekday mornings (I don’t like shopping and I hate crowds!) . . . family time on weekends instead of house cleaning, laundry, bill paying, shopping, yard work, and home repair projects . . . time to step up my health and fitness . . . and overall more rest and less stress.

My family members are also faring better.  My husband’s stress level has dropped with me close by (almost) all the time.  Our kids have been relieved of the (perceived) need to manage their dad . . . very unhealthy for them.

The only question – back on my first day of retirement almost a year ago – was the small matter of financial support.  No big deal.  Trust and obey – easy, peasy.

The first six months (or so) of retirement I put our household back in order and sought God’s direction for this leg of the journey.  Primarily, I decided to brush off the blog I started three+ years ago (ta-da) and the health and nutrition business I started eight years ago.  I feel these endeavors align with my values and are important to me.  I was not entirely convinced they would provide the income we would need, so I started an online bookkeeping service as well.

As always, God has provided the major part of our financial need by way of V.A. compensation for Caleb’s injuries, enabling me to spend the last five months setting up my new ventures.  (Shout out to President Obama for removing the obstacles preventing many veterans from receiving much-needed and deserved help.  I’m not a political commentator, but credit where credit is due.)

So, for the nitty-gritty of this post/announcement – if you don’t recognize my site or the domain, that is because I moved from wordpress.com to self-hosted sites.  I also combined two blog sites – “Wings Like Eagles” and “Adventures in Loving” – into one site.  Wings Like Eagles is discontinued.  If you are following my health and nutrition site, “Rachel’s Healthy Resources”, that has also been moved to self-hosted and re-designed (r-healthyresources.com).  The overall site that “houses” all my ventures has also been re-designed and moved from rachellane.org to rachellane.net.

The goal of the re-design is to more accurately reflect who I am and my personal values.  I expect some will have lost interest over the last several years . . . that’s okay.

For those who stay and for new readers, any feedback about the new layout(s) is welcome.

So, here we go.  Let the adventure begin!