We are celebrating our 2 year anniversary of purchasing the Bella Vista this month and to me, anniversaries, birthdays, etc. are always a time for reflection.  Reflection on where we have been, where we are at, and where we are going.  I like to come up with a theme to keep me focused and aligned…and this year’s theme is “Welcome”.

Our first full year in business my theme was “freedom”.  I had never before had the opportunity to call my own shots and be my own boss.  What I learned the first year was that I couldn’t do it alone and I needed God more than ever.  I had been pushing and fighting my way to get the property and business to look as I wanted and it was a struggle…I was exhausted.  By the second full year in business I realized that what I needed was to “surrender”.  I moved into a place of knowing that I could only do so much and that God was going to take care of the rest.  This year the chosen theme is “Welcome” and it is only fitting with the addition of our second child coming September 2018, bringing on a vacation sales representative to take over some of my responsibilities, and welcoming more guests to the Estate than ever before!  

So what does welcome mean exactly?  It means to “receive gladly” or “accept something with happiness or pleasure”.  This is such an important thing to remember with so many changes coming into our world year 3.  I pray for nothing more than to maintain a heart posture of “receiving gladly”.  The definition below sums up what we are striving to achieve each and every day at our private vacation home.  

“There can be an aesthetics of welcome. What is there when one makes a welcome? No thing really, and yet more than any thing. When one makes a welcome one creates the conditions that promise of home. One makes it possible for the other not any longer to feel outside or out of it, but to feel at home.”