When people think of abundance, money is the first thing that comes to mind. To us abundance is anything we feel grateful for. We are abundant in love, joy, and life. This kind of abundance is present when we can measure our worth based off of these ideas instead of our materials.
For this reason, we have been on a journey of minimalism over the past year. I have been reading about how to keep my home minimalistic while keeping and owning possessions that bring us joy. We want to love every part of my home, job, and life. As we simplify our possessions, schedules, and lives, we find new opportunities are able to come.
One of these opportunities feels way outside our comfort zone. We have made a leap of faith and enrolled our boys into a ‘new’ kind of school. I quote new because it isn’t but it is. The new and different would be that there are no grades, no age separation, no rules dictated to them. Instead, there is learning by doing, morning meetings to create rules, small classes that look more like families and communities than a classroom. They value play, projects, passion, and peers. The Innovation School is everything we want for our children and everyone else’s children but it has been just out of reach to us.
It is expensive. We have been concerned as to how we will pay for it. I keep telling Josh it will all work out. He sort of agrees but is generally grounded in reality while I am a firm believer in everything working out just because. We have been talking about sending our boys to The Innovation School for almost two years. We have met with the owner, toured the school, experienced shadow days, and simplified our finances. We have created mock budgets and played the ‘what if’ game. But still, we are not sure if all the details will come together in our favor.
As the days move forward, we can see that it is coming together. It seems weirdly simple even though it has seemed incredibly complicated to us previously. Abundance and energy has shifted our thinking and helped us see what we couldn’t before. When we used to see barriers and obstacles, now we see openings and new experiences.
Money has found us in mysterious ways. For the first time in our lives, we received five checks in the mail. Three of them were from our old insurance company refunding us over $350 because we overpaid. Another check was from BeachBody because they stated they had made some errors while I was a coach for them and they owed me money. And the final check was our money back from the private school we have been attending the past three years. While I knew we would get the tuition refund, the others were a surprise. Altogether, we just pocketed over $2300.
The only school supply needed is an iPad. I began looking at them a week ago and I had no idea they were so expensive. We could pay over $1,000 easily. We were not planning for this expense and while we have money put away, it was not for this. So, I enlisted Josh to help. We came up with a couple ideas of how this could work for us. Ultimately, he was able to find two store display models in the exact model we wanted for kids for $400. Not for each, for both.
I can actually say our boys are looking forward to going back to school. The Innovation School starts after Labor Day which is unique in this area. So in the past two weeks while everyone else’s children have been attending school, ours are still at home. Brayden and Zander have been able to find fun and joy in ways they haven’t in the past. Our college babysitter took them fishing three days. My dad helped out for portions; he took them golfing. And finally, one of the older students at The Innovation School watched them on the other days; our house looked like snacks exploded but they had so much fun and found a new friend.
One of the last pieces to the puzzle was to figure out how to pick up the kids. We contemplated paying someone to drive them home but it felt like a lot of work to line up different people every day. I began searching and found a website called The After School Place. It was a Saturday morning but I called and left a message anyway. The owner called me Sunday evening and told me we could take her last two spots. The program sounds amazing. They do hands-on things, field trips around town, and many of the employees are former students of mine. Puzzle complete.
It has all come together in ways we could have never seen. Mysterious money, new-found joys, a new friend, a great opportunity to learn, abundance and energy through it all. I have learned to trust and be part of the spiritual, energetic world. Money is energy. We are energy. Abundance has been unleashed in our lives and we cannot wait to experience what may come.