It's been a year since I've written for Boundless, and more has changed in our life than I could have imagined. We've moved to the Big Island of Hawaii, where my husband pastors a small mission parish while I chase after my two kids and Meli Hoku, our Border Collie Lab mix puppy who has already been lost (and found) twice in the coffee fields surrounding our home.

The economy in Hawaii is as turbulent as it is back on the mainland, perhaps even more so, because people come here on vacation, and when cash is tight, the tourist trade dwindles, along with hundreds of jobs and the desire to purchase second homes. Here, you'll see "for sale" signs on every street, as well as the "for lease" signs on nearly a quarter of the shops and restaurants in town as they are forced to turn out the lights and close their doors.

But this unusual economy has created an extraordinary opportunity in our own lives — the chance to inhabit our dream home, if only month-to-month. And it is fascinating to inhabit your dream, and then realize how different it looks from the inside than it does from the street.

Settling In

Last summer, some of our friends had to move back to the mainland suddenly. Their beautiful home had been on the market a year, and while they wanted to keep it on the market, they didn't want to leave it empty. In Hawaii, empty homes fill with mold and pests — nature just takes over. So they asked us if we might consider living there and paying a reduced rent in exchange for caretaking the home and yard, and also being available to show it.

The house has everything we could have hoped for and imagined, and it has been a great joy to host so many guests, to watch the sun rise over the mountains and set over the Pacific, and to jump with the kids on the in-ground trampoline. We love living on a quiet mountain road, amongst the coffee fields, taking carrots to the horses down the street every evening and waking to the sound of roosters crowing.

But I have to say that within a few days of moving in, I was shocked to discover one of the harsh realities of inhabiting a luxury home: It is a lot of work! If you lack staff (or in our case, if you are the staff) you might on average have about 15 minutes a day to actually enjoy the home. Should you add an adventurous toddler like Natalie and a puppy to the mix, you might have to cut that figure down to about 4.5 minutes.

Add to this the yard, which is meticulously landscaped but located in a jungle. It is so naturally moist that the sprinkler system has never been used — the gentle mountain rains keep everything growing in overdrive, which is part of the problem. I cannot look at the yard without cringing at the work ahead. There is always bamboo to trim back, rotten strawberry guavas to gather and dump, and weeds the size of cherry trees to pull.

Engaging The Dream

Ever since we arrived in Hawaii, my husband and I have longed to build a church and guest house. This island is the youngest land in the world, and locals call it "The Healing Island" because the land is so life-nurturing and restorative. Along with the gentleness of the ocean breezes, the fruit trees that drop avocados and guava and lilikoi as you approach, the culture itself is hospitable.

When our friends offered their home, we were thrilled because it has a complete guest apartment downstairs. It's a joy to begin to try out our dream. So this is the reality: It is wonderful to host guests and to live in a beautiful home, but it is almost too much wonderful for us to manage.

After years of struggling to be realistic about my capacities — and to keep my expectations pruned, I'm now learning what it is like to live in a large home with a large yard, and to try to maintain it all. There just aren't hours in the day to do it all justice. The to-do list just goes on and on, and many of the things I mean to do go undone, and many of the things I do get undone by my precocious toddler. This is perhaps one of the hardest lessons I've had to learn in awhile, because I want to do it all, and I want to do it well.

Hope in Troubled Times

A few weeks into our stint as caretakers of this home, my 7-year-old said to me, "You never want to play. All you do is clean." This was an awakening. I realized that living within my means (not just economically) but also in terms of inhabiting a reasonably-sized home that is not too high maintenance, could free me up to be more present to my children and my life.

And in light of the current economic crisis, where many people bought homes they couldn't afford and are now forced to give them up, moving into smaller and more modest homes might not be the worst thing after all. Not for families, at least, not for any of us.

As the owner of our home showed us the gazebo from Bali and the tangerine trees, he said, "You know, I was planning for my kids to grow up here." Then he shook his head and said, "It looks like everything is crumbling and falling apart, but maybe God just wants to do a new thing."

Moving Forward

We've lived here for five months now. Every night, before we turn in, we thank God for the gift of another day in this unique and wonderful home, and every morning we wake to a miracle.

And yet, sometimes I fantasize about our two bedroom condo in Chicago that had just enough space, but not too much. We had a scrubby patch of grass there, where the kids played and I drank coffee with friends. We shared it with our neighbors, and although it wasn't private, it wasn't our sole responsibility either. And my kids were out there far more than they use our current yard with the trampoline, because the laughter and play of the neighborhood kids always beckoned.

But perhaps our new home is curing me of the "What if?" syndrome, which asks, "What if we had a fireplace, forty linear feet of granite countertops, a stainless steel sink so large the puppy could swim laps in it?" For the time being, we have all that and more, and many days I spend the bulk of my energy trying to maintain it.

We're discovering that less is sometimes more, and more is sometimes less — less time, less money, less peace. Perhaps the cure will work and I will find my way to a deeper contentment. Perhaps our crumbling economy will cure us all.

As Dickens said, "Enough is such a wonderful word." Let's keep praying for enough, and embrace the gift for what it is, because if you have enough, you are rich indeed.