Last weekend we drove one last time to our boat, to finish cleaning it out.

My mom and I had gotten the bulk of things moved out, a couple months back. She and I were there for a “girls’ weekend” when I arrived at the realization that we should probably sell it—an epiphany that had probably been building in my subconscious for a while. One thing after another had surfaced as things we wished were different, or things we needed to fix or change—and on top of that, we’d come to realize that we couldn’t even get to the boat half as often as we’d hoped or planned to. Even when we were able to get away and make the five-hour drive to get there, we spent our time working on the boat rather than sailing it anywhere. A boat needs a lot of upkeep, and we weren’t even getting that done, let alone the many bigger projects.

For a couple years that boat had been my “Happy Place,” but it was becoming less and less so—and I finally admitted that to myself while I was there with my mom. So we turned our visit into a packing-up project, and we spent the weekend hauling things up to the dock and packing them into her car. (You’d be amazed how much stuff can be fitted into a Honda Pilot.) But there was still a carload-worth of stuff that needed to be cleared out—and we needed to “clean house” and swab the deck and get it ready to show.

I’d been dreading the prospect. Dreading the time in what had been my Happy Place for two years.

I find I have a deep sense of embarrassment—almost shame—-about having fallen for the “wrong” boat. It goes deeper than embarrassment about being wrong (and jumping in with both feet and buying the boat), although that’s a part of it. I know these things about myself: I jump into things with both feet, and I hate being wrong. I did that with a marriage once, though in that case I’ll plead being “under the influence” of a severe Manic swing of Bipolar. He was a pathological liar and a con man, and turned out to be already married to someone else, so you see how well that turned out. Loving the wrong boat was at least not damaging in the way that falling for the wrong man was. He damaged my FAMILY, and he’s a contributing factor to why my kids still don’t talk to me, more than a decade later. Loving the boat wasn’t damaging—it was just a dead end. Or a detour, maybe. And while I loved it, it contributed a great deal of Joy, so it wasn’t a waste. It just didn’t turn into “sailing into the sunset” the way we’d originally planned with it.

Selling the boat changes the shape of our future. The Plan was to finish paying it off and to leave our job, managing an Oregon RV Park, within a couple more years to move aboard the boat. We’d equip it with satellite internet and I’d look for work freelance writing to keep the “sailing kitty” healthy, and we’d Travel. To warm places. We figured we’d start with a winter in Mexico—in part because that “shakedown cruise” would keep us within reach of a continent while we got into our groove. And then we’d sail into the Pacific, where there are hundreds of places I’d like to see, and we’d get to see them while taking our “home base” and comfort zone with us, and we could visit them in as leisurely a fashion as we’d like, with no need to rush around and get back on a plane home. Home would be with us.

So selling the boat changes the shape of the future. We’re still at our RV-Park job, and there’s not an “end date” anymore. Or rather, we don’t know what it is. The future doesn’t have a road-map (or a sailing chart) at the moment, and that’s not my comfort zone. I’m accustomed to having a Plan—even though I know that God usually tops my Plans with something better. I suppose at this point we’re waiting to see what the “something better” is going to be.