Travelers

I'm not entirely sure why we haven't settled down and planted roots. Perhaps it's a habit caused by switching coasts to go to college and spending the first four years of my career in the Army. Maybe it's the prohibitive cost of raising a family in Orange County or San Francisco, where Rochelle and I are from. A priest friend responded when I announced our last move, "so you're serving mammon?" 

From Boston, to Kentucky, to Washington State, to San Jose, to Dallas, to Greenville South Carolina, to central Illinois, we've felt adrift at times, at home at others, but never rooted.

We bought a house for the first time in 2017, in the Dallas area, with school, our parish, and my work within a four mile radius.

We moved six months later. Exasperated with the endless changes, I declared that if we ever moved again, we would require

• a short drive to the Latin Mass
• adjacency to California, so we can visit family
• mountains and/or beaches

Until a job in Illinois presented a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that suppressed all three essentials. 

When do we know when we're home? How do we decide that a move for career outweighs the toll on the family? I hope this site will help fellow trads share stories of how they're finding or building community. 

Author

Floyd Anderson is a husband and father of five. He lives in Bloomington, IL.