Larsen Life Update(s)

Those of you who know me well know that our family tends to stay off social media. One drawback of that is some friends lose out on those ‘life updates’. Whether those are small or large in nature, I recognize that there is probably room for us to better communicate our comings and goings.

This newsletter won’t necessarily solve for that, however in these first few posts I thought it appropriate to take some time and reflect on our almost 10 years 😱 in the DMV and share tidbits of what we’re thinking through as a family.

Why Leave DC?

When announcing our move, most of the responses we encountered look something like this...and I get it…I still have a lot of questions myself 😅 

When did this come about?

When Iz stepped away from her job in Nov ‘23 after returning from maternity leave (more on this in another post), we knew both her new stay-at-home role and loss of income would likely trigger a move, we just didn’t know when.

Why not just move further out in Northern Virginia?

While it’s possible we could find cheaper and more spacious housing elsewhere in NOVA, we aren’t just solving for tightening space, but pace. As a growing family, it proved difficult to remove ourselves from breakneck speed of DC. I remember feeling validation on this when we talked with a missionary family overseas who had lived in DC for a similar amount of time and commented that it’s not just the US at large who struggles with over-scheduling, but DC specifically is one of the worst offenders.

There are family, friends, food (#feeding toddlers), financial, fitness, church, work, and social responsibilities that can swirl into an undercurrent of fatigue or overwhelm that oftentimes sits beneath the surface. Maybe you’ve felt this..

None of these things are inherently bad, however we tend to idolize productivity and performance while forgoing any sort of sabbath rest. We don’t want our children to pick up on this hurriedness and develop anxiety as a result. I think there are plenty of Christian families who are able to swim against the riptides of DC’s busy culture- we just didn’t consider ourselves capable as a family to do this and needed a reset.

So, where to next?

Currently we’re hunkered down in CT with my folks as we ‘resettle’ from our hectic DC exit. My parents provide a much needed reprieve from managing all those aforementioned tasks, and it’s quite likely we move close to them permanently as we try and grow our family. That being said, the housing market is tricky to navigate- even with an elite Chairman’s Club real estate agent for a mom!

Thursday morning I’ll start the 20hr trek down to Naples, FL with our dog Beau, getting a heads’ start on Iz and the boys. She’ll then fly down 24hrs later where I’ll pick her up as she lands at Fort Meyers. Naples is more of a 4 month ‘sabbatical’/layover with free rent (thanks yet again to parents, FTW 🙌 ) until we find our next home..wherever that may be!

Well what about..that other thing 🤔?

Even before November of last year and the birth of Levi, Iz and I had been exploring missions and what it would look like to move our family abroad. It’s true that some of this desire was in response to both the financial constraints and pace of DC, but more recently we received positive affirmation of this calling.

When I explain the ‘call’ to missions, I think the simplest question in response is how should you or I feel about the 3.2 billion people who don’t have access to the Gospel and have never heard the name of Jesus? The response to this may not necessarily be to embed yourself amongst the unreached, but surely it should elicit a desire to at the very least explore ways to partner in getting the Good News to these farthermost regions..

Alongside missions exploration, we were considering the following;

• Marketplace missions- leveraging vocational opportunities for overseas job placement

  • Business as Mission (BAM) opportunities- entrepreneurial endeavors that we could plug into to support economic development

• Crossworld https://crossworld.org/ as a placement agency

  • vision trip to Málaga, Spain to assess what live and ministry could look like amidst this people group and mission field

• Homeschooling 😬 (still a topic of discussion)

• Predating our missions focus: Job pivot to law enforcement (pre-Levi; Q4 ‘22- Q3 ‘23)

While job status can change and you may choose to permanently not pursue a certain vocational path (my parents love that I chose not to be a cop), I don’t believe that you can ever ‘step away’ from this call to missions. It will always be a present and active conviction that we pray God continues to stoke in our Spirit. Whether it’s long-term placement, short-term trips, or even just financial support for now, we trust that the Lord’s plans are for our good and His glory. My favorite reflection here comes from Joel Rosenberg’s The Invested Life where he describes the role that John and Edith Hayward served in discipling one of India’s most prominent evangelists Bakht Singh, despite never getting to fulfill their desire to live abroad.

Where that leaves us

There are always important decisions you will have to make as an individual or family. The relative weight we ascribe to those decisions I think depends a lot on how big we view our God to be. We’ve made a series of lifestyle decisions and continue to be presented with decisions each day that allow us to either trust God in faith or fall back on our fleshly impulses.

A present-day example of that can be applied to the home-buying process:

Notice that many times, a reaction driven by fear may seem like the logical thing to do. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God- 1 Corinthians 2 shows us that trusting God doesn’t mean we abandon all rational thought, but it does mean that as Christians we first tap into a different source:

Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. [1 Cor 2:12]

Why choose wisdom from the Spirit? ‘..so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God’ [v5]. Paul does not come to the Corinthian church proclaiming the testimony of God with lofty speech, but instead relies on the power of Christ. When spiritual people make worldly decisions (using worldly wisdom), it not only compromises God’s testimony, but also dismisses His power.

How might you trust God today with your decisions?

We need your prayers and encouragement as we navigate these up’s and down’s of life. It can be so easy to fall into patterns of worldly wisdom and logic while pushing God out of our decisions. I want to hear from you and be able to lift up any decisions that feel burdensome for you or your family.

Please keep in touch!

May the favor of the Lord our God be upon you, to establish the work of your hands,

Trent