Freedom of days

A member of the church, an MBA in accounting, started a business with some friends and it did unexpectedly well. When the business was sold, the man was able to retire. After a while of spending 8 hours a day on the gold course, he became bored with his retirement and wished that he could do something different. He went to his bishop and asked to get a list of ward members who had not been visited the month before. He dedicated his days to visiting members of his ward, often visiting families who had been visited by home teachers that month. He sought a job at BYU to teach accounting but wasn't hired because he didn't have the education required. By volunteering, instead of seeking payment, he taught at BYU. He later went on to become a mission president.

Doesn't everyone wish they could retire early and have the freedom to do whatever during the day? If you could have that situation, what would you do with your days?

My husband and I love to ask ourselves questions like this. There is so much we wish we could do in our lives and we often feel limited by financial responsibilities and of course financial resources. We're a young student family so it comes as no surprise.

If that could happen for our family, my husband would love to spend as much as time as possible with me and our children at home. He would do a great deal of woodworking with the tools he's collected in the last few years. We would go on many day trips in our area to go hiking because we get sick of being at home. We live in a beautiful area of Washington where its easy to drive for a couple of hours and then explore some amazing places. We have this dream that we could homeschool our children and the world would be our classroom.

Want to learn about castles? Off to Europe.

Learning about the forest? Go camping for two weeks in the forest.

Hike, backpack, travel, camp.

That would be our life for a few years.

Then we would probably settle on an homestead property, grow and raise our own food and medicines. My husband would go back to his woodworking and photography. I would go to school and get my PhD. My husband might try to make some money by selling his arts. I would be practice in a community or ward as a midwife and general wise woman. I might run for public office and put my education in family studies and public policy to use as a decision maker in government.

Maybe we would adopt. We would certainly contribute and volunteer for organizations that teach family values to children and young adults, that address social issues that distress families. Likely our travels would be in conjunction with humanitarian efforts like Habitat for Humanity and other international community building non-profits. We'd likely volunteer to work in the temple or perform church service wherever we live.

When our children went to college, my husband and I would serve missions for the church. We dream of being missionaries in Nauvoo, church campsites and properties, humanitarian and family history missions. We'd pretty much be excited to go anywhere and hope that we would have opportunities to put our skills, knowledge, education and passions put to work.

One thing I love about my husband is that he is happy to stay home and care for our children an equal amount while I pursue personal development and social service opportunities. Its his professional development that is keeping him from doing that now and will likely keep him from doing much of that in the future but we hope that once he is settled in his career that he will have a flexible enough schedule where that could work for us. He's pretty adamant, however, that he never wants me to run for public office because he doesn't want to deal with the public life. I don't blame him...