WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN…

We were in Bar Harbor, Maine. We had just finished a tour on a lobster boat. I just learned that Chance, our motorhome that we left in Littleton, New Hampshire, has a blown engine. We cannot afford to put the amount of money required into our 1999 motorhome. So what are we to do?

What do you do when you are hundreds of miles from your “home base” and your motorhome, which is your home, is dead? I must admit that we were emotionally overwhelmed. We are in the middle of a long-dreamed-of and planned tour of the Northeast. Suddenly we are faced with seemingly impossible decisions. What do we do? Do we continue the trip? What do we do with the RV? What about our stuff? Where are we going to live? And how?  What do we do with this dead motorhome? The easiest decision, which was far from easy, was that we would not put the amount of money needed in a twenty-two-year-old RV.

First, we decided we would not continue our tour of the Northeast. The next day we returned to Littleton. We decided to rent a truck to load everything in and on Chance and take it back to Michigan. In Michigan, we would put it all in storage until we figured out what to do.

We were nearly a thousand miles from Michigan and had a dead motorhome and did not know what to do with it. We concluded that our only option was to leave it. It wasn’t worth fixing, nor was it worth the cost of shipping it hundreds of miles. We arranged to leave it with the dealership where it had been towed.

We removed all of our belongings from the coach.  We also removed most of the upgrades we had made. We pulled things like the backup camera, solar system, and cell phone signal booster. We tried to take everything of value that was feasibly possible.

I can not explain how important it was to have our dear friends, Steve and Kathy, with us. We could not have done what we did had they not been with us. Their physical assistance was terrific. Steve climbed up on the roof and removed the solar panels and the backup camera. Kathy helped Mary pack up the stuff inside the motorhome, and they both helped load the truck. Since we couldn’t all ride in the truck, Steve drove the car back to Vermont. But the most significant help was their emotional support. The Bible teaches us to “bear one another’s burdens.” We were, and are, so thankful that they were with us. Their sharing the load made all the difference.

Honestly, we were a wreck. We were homeless! Our hopes and dreams were tied up in that RV. Our trust is in God, and we believe His will is perfect. But we were confused, disappointed, and unsure of what to do next. We were ready to walk away from a lifestyle we had loved and felt called to. We were committed to going to Texas and serving as chaplains with Christian Resources International. But now we would have nowhere to live in Texas.

We returned to Vermont to drop off our friends, and that same day Mary and I began the two-day drive back to Michigan without Chance and with no idea what the future held for us.

This story will continue in my next post.