Hi, I'm Karli
Once upon a time I dreamed about being a pilot in the Air Force. It was a dream that I followed diligently up to the point that I had a recruiter and was pursuing an appointment to the Air Force Academy my junior year of high school. It was then I realized I don’t really like structure, or being told what to do.
We’ll just say that I’m more suited for the entrepreneurial life.
And for motherhood.
As a mother, *most* days I am Commander and Chief and resist being overthrown by the small army of girls we call our children. Contrary to life in the military, at least I have the illusion of control.
Years ago my corporate profile leveraged a decade of start-up business, marketing development and business strategy experience. Seasons spent on both the East and West Coasts working with non-profits, years of adventure, free-spirited risk and traveling alone.
Now, it would be fun to go anywhere alone…including the restroom.
But let’s start at the beginning of an earlier chapter in my life.
By the grace of God, Joel Stobie, a handsome, funny, old-soul of a young man, swept me off my feet 13 years ago and asked me to adventure through life with him. And what a journey it has been. Although the beach still calls me, we decided SoCal was not fiscally the best place to start a life together and we relocated to Boise, ID, my hometown.
In the first two years of marriage we decided to test the odds and do all the things that cause stress on a marriage at once. We bought a house, had a baby, I started a consulting business, he started a career, we helped plant a church, had another baby, started remodeling the house, invited a friend to live with us to help remodel, Joel studied religiously, earned his professional engineering license, I started a blog and sometimes we slept.
Intermittently.
The years flew by. Our babies grew a little, so we added two more girls to the mix totaling four girls ages 6 and under, watched the young man who lived with us grow up, get married and have his own baby and grow out of our backyard apartment. And we started all over with a second young man and watched him repeat the journey with his bride and eventually his own little one. We urban gardened, built a solar cooker, and perpetually remodeled each time I flooded the basement. In my last blog entry we started homeschooling and got chickens. Clearly chickens were the tipping point in our lives.
We realized we were tired. Really tired.
We took a deep breath and decided we needed to stop the hamster wheel before we missed all the little years with our girls. Breaking our vow to never live in suburbia, we bought a house with a to-do list of “mow” and a garage we drive into to park. Life kept whirling around us, and one day I realized I didn’t quite know who I was anymore. I realized that in all the doing we did, I forgot who I was called to be.
On a date with Joel, I began to squeak out the weight on my heart, and slowly, with a lot more encouragement from him, I began finding my voice again.
Our lives the past few years have been laced with pain. There’s been a lot of “undoing” as we stop to take inventory, pause to re-ask why we do the things we do, and begin again. Growing pains hurt and so does starting over.
But we’re doing it together.
Slowly, thoughtfully, with a whole lot more purpose, perseverance and the occasional “not quite kosher” word. We have been face-first in the arena and are picking ourselves up and walking forward. Brené Brown calls it “braving the wilderness” and we call it “doing hard things” and “traveling at your own risk.”
We’ve had many adventures and as my wise husband says, “We’ve written many chapters in this book of life.” I’m still waiting to see how all the chapters fit together but I am so grateful that the common thread in each of them is grace.
Grace. The unearned, undeserved, relentless favor and kindness of a good, good Father.
Grace has carried me through peaks and valleys, seasons of abundance and seasons of pain. And regardless of how risky or uncertain tomorrow seems, we know Grace will carry us through.
Miscellaneous
I'm a closet introvert. The kind of introvert that is socially capable so people don't know that I get nervous meeting new people, or, that after a party or teaching at an event I have to hibernate for at least a day.
Writing is like food for the fire in my soul while teaching others is the spark that ignites the flame. I’ve been asking a lot of “what sets my soul on fire” questions lately and writing and teaching are toward the top of list. Along with: my people, twinkly lights and time around the table.
There are pockets in my heart reserved for the streets of Manhattan, the pier in San Clemente, the sands of North Carolina, the big skies of Montana, the trees of Lookout Mountain. We'd like to renovate an old hotel and fill it with orphans and by the grace of God, call them our own. Someday.
I'm a retired want-to-be homesteader. As a rancher’s daughter, there will always be tension in my soul where my heart aches for the country, but in all this asking "why do we do what we do?”, we know that our family is called to the city. As hard as community can be, the way we press into relationships and pour into those around us says something about the Kingdom which is to come. For us, seeking out, building up and ushering in that Kingdom here as it is in heaven, is just easier the closer we are to the most amount of people. So on weekends throughout the year we escape to the mountains or to the ranch to ride horses, but we know that the city is our home. For years we attempted urban homesteading but for the past few years we've been resting in the suburbs with potted tomatoes and one basil plant. I think we’re ready to break free from the HOA and get chickens again, but time will tell...
Why I write
Like I said, over a decade ago this blog was my husband's idea at making me more efficient. Why write an email to 12 friends telling them about cloth diapers when I can write one blog post? You may think he makes my life easier...I'll let you keep thinking that. I was consumed by the little years of raising children, much of which I don’t remember to be honest. Looking back at the pages of first blog I see love, the provision of God in keeping us all alive and the thread of grace woven through each day. And that’s all still true today only now I write for different reasons.
Writing is my art. It has intimidated me to put those words in print, but like I’ve said, I’m practicing this whole being brave thing. While I used to write so my children could have record and they would always be able to hear my voice, today, I see writing as my way of creating, of imaging my Maker by offering back any creativity I’ve been given. I write for my girls, and for you, but ultimately I write because of what it says about God, because of what it says about how He has created me.
I write to empower another voice to speak, to be the helping hand to others laying face down in the arena of life, to help lead someone bravely past the “Travel At Your Own Risk” sign, even if there is pain on the other side. I write to encourage you to do what sets your heart on fire, and all the hard things it will take to follow through with it. I write because hitting “post” on the vulnerable places of my heart is a hard thing to do. I write because we have a commitment to our children to do hard things. And ultimately I write because the Truth found in doing hard things sets us free.
Do hard things. Find Truth. Be free.