A few years ago we moved to a tiny mountain town, out in the country of upstate New York from Santa Monica, CA -- to live in a 200-year old farm house on 2 acres with a pond.

This move has opened us in so many ways -- ways we could never have predicted. But first we had to trust our impulse to take a big leap, to let go of a need for certainty. Of course, the same leap is required in any new relationship or when we give ourselves fully to a marriage that has been neglected.

We're surrounded by God's beauty, we live on a road dotted with old farm houses and the skies are a painter's dream. Only because we followed an impulse to move beyond a lifestyle that had become predictable, to dance with life! We gave ourselves to the adventure of expanding intimacy -- both with one another and with nature!

Certainly this change has come with challenges -- the water smelled of sulphur, mice visited the kitchen on a regular basis, the chimney was dangerously cracked and on and on..

Yet, we are both much the richer for these encounters with a new reality. Each of us is more resilient, more flexible, more conscious of the positive blessings of our life here each and every day -- the new joy we feel in being together, the deeper levels of intimacy and tenderness we feel.

Jim learned how to put up wallpaper and keep the beavers from blocking our pond run-off.

Judith now loves to wear hiking boots and put wild flowers around the house in the spring. We