E16 A Little Too Safe: Why Your Comfort Zone is Overrated (Part 1)

SHOW TRANSCRIPT:

Jennifer Cudmore (00:01)
Welcome back everybody. I have my friend Rosalyn with me again today. So I’m excited to have this discussion. We are gonna chat a little bit about the comfort zone and why it’s overrated. I think a lot of times we just stick to what’s safe, what’s cozy, what’s secure, what’s small, because if that feels comfortable to us and we all know that getting out of our comfort zone is actually good for us. So we’re gonna talk a little bit about that and then share a story about how God

pushed us both out of our comfort zone in a very big way, a very similar way. So my question to start us off is ⁓ where are you feeling a little bit too comfortable, a little too secure, a little too cozy in certain areas of your life? So where are you keeping your world small? Where are you playing it safe or how often are you playing it safe and where might you be hiding and letting fear hold you back? So to start off, we are going to kind of

Rosalynn Lasley (00:30)
Yes.

Jennifer Cudmore (00:57)
we need to define what is a comfort zone first of all. So Rosalynn, how would you define a comfort zone?

Rosalynn Lasley (01:03)
I think a comfort zone is a place where we feel familiar and safe ⁓ and reluctant to change. ⁓ You know, just because something is familiar doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s good, ⁓ but you know, we’re prone to continue to repeat the patterns that we know, regardless of whether we’re genuinely happy and thriving and being used the way that the Lord wants us to be.

Jennifer Cudmore (01:29)
That’s exactly it. We stick with what’s familiar because the unknown is super scary. I know for me that’s a huge deal. It has been. I’m really challenging myself to get over that. So I did look up a specific definition because I was just curious. And so according to the Oxford Dictionary, a comfort zone is a place, position or situation in which

you feel safe or secure. It’s a familiar psychological state. There’s that word. Somehow I missed it when I read it before. So it’s a familiar psychological state where people are at ease and they perceive that they’re in control of their experience and they have feelings of ⁓ low level feelings of anxiety and stress. So ultimately after reading that I was like, yeah, the comfort zone. It really is. It’s about us being in control. That’s what it for me.

I feel in control when I’m in my comfort zone.

Rosalynn Lasley (02:22)
Or it’s what we know what to expect because, you know, comfort zones aren’t necessarily good situations. There are people that will stay in like unhealthy relationships and things like that because that’s what they know. That’s their comfort zone, even though that’s not what they would actually want. They don’t know a way out. And so sometimes our comfort zone is a place where we’re like, well, this is what we know. But what’s on the other side is scary because we don’t know.

Jennifer Cudmore (02:48)
Yes, exactly. ⁓ I think that A little comfort is actually good for us because we need to be able to rest and relax. If we’re always in a flight fight or freeze, how does that saying go? If we’re always in that

heightened mode like then we can’t relax that’s really bad for our body our mind and all that so we do have to have a little some sort of safety zone but it also if we’re not careful we get out of balance with it and we’ll it’ll keep us in a really small world it’ll prevent us from living a fulfilling life nobody likes being uncomfortable right at least i know i don’t so how can we learn to what i would call make friends with

Rosalynn Lasley (03:23)
No, no.

Jennifer Cudmore (03:30)
being uncomfortable and that’s something that I’ve really been pushing myself to do for the last several years is it’s okay that I don’t like this, that I’m not comfortable, that this new thing isn’t familiar or whatever.

Rosalynn Lasley (03:43)
Yeah, and I’ve had that same experience. I struggle a lot with anxiety. I pretty much have my entire life. so familiarity is comfort. And even if it’s not necessarily a good thing, you’re like, well, at least I know what to expect in this situation. But that doesn’t mean that I’m in the place where I’m going to do the best for myself, the best for my family. And so we have to get outside of what’s comfortable in order to, you know, in the end find

bigger and better things.

Jennifer Cudmore (04:14)
That’s exactly right. That’s what I’ve discovered is that there are so many bigger and better things out there for me if I would just take that step and give myself that push or choose to be brave or whatever. ⁓ So our lives are more beautiful, more successful when we get out of our comfort zone. And then I think of the concept of where there’s no risk, there’s no reward. And that’s something that really helped me step back and go, okay, I really have to become more brave and stop.

Rosalynn Lasley (04:24)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Jennifer Cudmore (04:44)
staying in this place because I want more and if I don’t take that risk, if I don’t face those fears, I’m not going to get the more I’m not going to get the bigger and the better. So if we refuse to let go of control, if we refuse to step out in faith, we’re going to stay stuck. But like I was saying before, also sometimes God will give us a little push because he knows that staying in our bubble is not good for us. okay.

Rosalynn Lasley (04:54)
Mm-hmm.

⁓ absolutely. Yeah.

Jennifer Cudmore (05:13)
So Roslyn and I are going to share stories. So both of us lived in Alaska. I lived there 20 years. Roslyn lived there a couple of several decades, a lot longer than me. You grew up there.

Rosalynn Lasley (05:24)
Yeah, I was born and raised

there. I lived there until I was 37, aside from my senior year of high school. My senior year of high school, I moved to Washington State, but then I went right back after I finished school.

Jennifer Cudmore (05:35)
Right, that’s right. I remember. ⁓ it was about four years ago, not quite four years ago, Tim and I were talking about, ⁓ you know, we’ve been here 20 years. We were thinking that we want to move somewhere warmer. Our, you know, our son had already left home. Our daughter was about to graduate. And so we started looking into, well, let’s take it seriously. Let’s go ahead and move somewhere else. And of course we chose the total opposite of the United States that we chose the East Coast.

Rosalynn Lasley (06:03)
Okay.

Jennifer Cudmore (06:05)
And that’s what ended up happening to you too. You guys chose the East Coast.

Rosalynn Lasley (06:09)
Yeah. And for me, ⁓ it never crossed my mind to leave Alaska. You know, that was my comfort zone. It’s all I’d ever really known. you know, I didn’t mind the winters cause I prefer being inside. you’re like, I don’t care if it’s cold. I’m inside. ⁓ you know, everyone I’ve ever known and loved lived in Alaska. And so I had never dreamed of leaving. ⁓ it was something that never crossed my mind, but again, the Lord allowed me to be in a place of extreme discomfort to where, ⁓

Jennifer Cudmore (06:23)
Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (06:39)
I had to make a decision, and it wasn’t just me, you know, it was a family decision, but do I want to stay in this place because it’s familiar and comfortable, even though I wasn’t comfortable at that time, or do I want to trust that he has something different in store for me? So ⁓ it was not something I was pursuing at all. ⁓ It was kind of the result of, you know, 10, 15 years of prayer that I never would have seen fulfilled the way that it was.

Jennifer Cudmore (07:08)
Yeah, so what events or what sort of things happened for you to start thinking about, okay, maybe it is time to move and time to leave Alaska? What did that look like for you?

Rosalynn Lasley (07:19)
So, and this is something

I haven’t shared with very many people, but because I struggle with my mental health with anxiety and depression, I had gotten to a place where ⁓ our finances were in shambles. Like I was not paying bills because I was just like depressed. And then I was in this vicious cycle of there’s not enough to stretch. ⁓ Things at work were very, very toxic. And I had been at my job for almost 15 years. I’d been praying for something different, but I also was at the place where I felt like

⁓ I wasn’t good enough that I would ever find something other than where I was. I couldn’t imagine that anybody would want me if I was worthless at this job that I knew how to do well. So how in the world could I start over somewhere else if I wasn’t doing in quote unquote a good job, but that wasn’t actually the case where I was. And so ⁓ we were at the point where we were about to be foreclosed on our house. ⁓ And so I’m like, well, I can’t leave my job if my job is.

paying well but not paying enough to get caught back up on our bills. So anyway, and then things at work kind of imploded and so I abruptly quit my job, which was terrible timing. know, if you’re about to lose your house, how in the world can you leave your job? But I was at my breaking point. ⁓ And so, you know, the Lord worked it out. We had some help financially. We sold my vehicle and thankfully it was at the time where ⁓ like used cars were selling for

a good amount of money. So thankfully my husband had the, you know, thought like, let’s look and see how much your car is worth. So even though I owed money on my car, I had a lot of equity in my car. And so we were able to ⁓ get caught up on our mortgage, but still like we had to figure out how we were going to survive. You know, we could catch up on our mortgage, but I didn’t have an income. so long story short, somebody in our life allowed us to borrow some money to kind of hold us over until, you know, we figured out what was next in our life. And ⁓

Jennifer Cudmore (08:56)
nice.

Rosalynn Lasley (09:16)
At some point, my dad had reached out to me having no idea what all we were going through. And through a lot of conversation and prayer and ⁓ discussions with my husband and I and then with our kids, we decided to give Virginia a try because that’s where my dad and stepmom and siblings were living. ⁓ So I don’t know if you want me to continue going on how that all came to be, but. ⁓

Jennifer Cudmore (09:38)
Yeah, I do in a minute. me ⁓

let so mine looks a little different Tim and I had already had in the back of our mind that we were going to leave Alaska. In fact, we didn’t plan to raise the kids up there what we ended up saying and that’s where the Lord wanted us and and that was fine. But then after our son left and we had visited him a couple of times when he was doing training on the East Coast and at one point we were in Charleston, South Carolina and we thought wow, like we really like this area. We like the temperature.

You know, my husband had been working for a shipping company and after 10 winters of working outside in sub-zero temperatures, he said, know, Jen, like, I just don’t think I can do this for much longer. He’s like, I am so done with the winters. And I thought, well, I’m done with the winters and I’ve never even outside.

Rosalynn Lasley (10:23)
Okay.

Yeah.

Jennifer Cudmore (10:27)
So I said, okay, well, you our daughter has one more year of school. We need to seriously start looking and thinking about what we want. And so he started looking for jobs around the East Coast area, specifically in the Carolinas. Something came open and our plan was to leave in the summertime.

and ⁓ the job came open in the spring and so he ended up having to go down ⁓ sometime in March. I don’t remember the exact dates and so it definitely did not look the way that we thought it was going to look or the way we would have wanted. So what that ended up doing is you know we were separated for seven, eight weeks while he’s getting settled down here looking for houses. I’m back home helping my daughter finish school.

Rosalynn Lasley (10:58)
Yeah.

Jennifer Cudmore (11:11)
figuring out how to sell the house and so it was ⁓ it was a lot it was a lot. ⁓

Rosalynn Lasley (11:16)
Yeah, we had never

been to Virginia and we decided we were moving. Like, so like it was literally a leap of faith. We put our house on the market the same weekend we actually flew here to see if we would like it. mean, you’re kind of committed already if you put your house on the market. So, but for me, it was like I was living on borrowed faiths. Like I’d seen God come through in ways that

Jennifer Cudmore (11:20)
I’m Lola.

Yes, exactly.

Rosalynn Lasley (11:39)
I never could have imagined in circumstances I never could have imagined. Like I never imagined that my mental health would get to a place where we were about to lose our home and all of that sort of thing. So if God carried us through other situations that were dire without, you know, our influence, like I caused our financial issues, but in prior situations, I hadn’t caused the situation. They just happened, but God still walked us through it. And so if he was faithful and good in those things, we had to trust that he would be faithful and good in this as well.

Jennifer Cudmore (11:47)
now.

Rosalynn Lasley (12:08)
And it’s hard when you’re struggling with, like, I created this mess, so why do I deserve God healing me and restoring me and pulling me out of this? But he still did.

Jennifer Cudmore (12:20)
Yeah, yeah and crazy like who would have thought that what you needed was to relocate like that. I mean we just don’t always know what we need. We think we know. So it’s good that God pushes us.

Rosalynn Lasley (12:29)
I never would have thought. No. And it was terrifying. Yeah, but

he allowed me to get to a desperate place where I had nothing left but to trust him and to decide like, okay, well, which do you prefer? Like both situations are uncomfortable, so choose your discomfort.

Jennifer Cudmore (12:39)
Yeah.

Yes, exactly. And I think that’s important. We choose our discomfort and we can choose the discomfort of staying here or we can choose the discomfort of trying something different, something bigger, something better. So yeah, for sure. Okay, so tell me a little bit about ⁓ what it took for you guys to start packing up and actually leave.

Rosalynn Lasley (13:09)
So, ⁓ you know, I was in conversation with my dad about, know, he really liked living here. He was here for work, but it was much safer, cleaner, happier, healthier. The weather is fantastic. And so he’s like, you know, you really should give it some thought, you know, on the back of my mind. I’m like, that’s absolutely crazy. But there wasn’t a whole lot, ⁓ not that there wasn’t a lot holding us back because we had.

generally like people. My husband had a steady job. He’d been at his job for 17 years and even though that environment wasn’t healthy, ⁓ it was familiar and comfortable and he did it well. It paid the bills unless I stopped paying the bills, you know, and so for us it just took, you know, somebody else to say have you ever thought about doing something different? And honestly my answer was no, I never considered doing something like this. And so because I had a lot of time on my hands because I’d left my job,

⁓ and we started kind of looking into things, looking at the housing market here. we decided to, okay, let’s do it. and so I’m trying to think of how it kind of all came to pass. we had listed our house, I think in March of that year. ⁓ and it was at the time where the housing market was crazy. It was definitely in favor of selling at the time. So if we had to take a leap of faith, that was a good time to do it. we had like competing offers on our home.

We’d listed it that week and we flew here to check it out, but we had the ones that had like, if these people bid this much, then we’ll ⁓ exceed their bid by this much, the escalation clause. So ⁓ that was crazy too. But ⁓ when it came to time to move, ⁓ we were supposed to be out of our house. We didn’t have another place to stay. So we had three kids, two dogs, and we’re like, well, now what are we gonna do?

Jennifer Cudmore (14:44)
Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (14:59)
So the girls and I flew to Washington state and stayed with Dustin’s aunt and uncle for a couple of weeks while he finished packing up the house while he was still working while packing up the house. And then I flew back to Alaska and then drove through Canada with him and the dogs. And then we drove the rest of the way. But even that was crazy. Like it was, it wasn’t quite right after COVID. I think it was 2022 when we moved, but there were still very strict COVID restrictions in Canada.

Jennifer Cudmore (15:28)
Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (15:28)
and they’re very anti-gun, so we were like, have no way to protect ourselves. I’ve listened to way too many true crime podcasts to feel safe. So that was also a huge leap of faith. We didn’t have any plans whatsoever. I figured out where we were staying the day of. I’m hopping on like Travelocity or whatever in the intermittent cell phone service ranges going well.

If we drive four more hours, this is where we’ll be. Let’s see what I can find tonight. So like we literally had no plans whatsoever. We were just taking a genuine leap of faith and hitting the road. You know, it was, and then when I look back and think, wow, we really did that, it’s still crazy to me.

Jennifer Cudmore (16:06)
Yeah.

Yeah, and so for me being the more of a planner, I had to have the planned out before we left. we ended up trying to buy, ⁓ because we knew that driving through Canada, ⁓ you’re going to hit dead zones. And so you’re not going to be able to use the GPS the whole time. So we went ahead and bought a map.

Rosalynn Lasley (16:19)
Mm-hmm.

Jennifer Cudmore (16:31)
I’m just looking at this paper map going, my word, it’s been so long since I read a map. I’m like, well, I think we’re taking this road and it was crazy. so I definitely want to talk about the drive in a minute, but ⁓ let me back up. So for me, the whole packing up the house thing was a huge stressor because I was also working and I was worried about my daughter. She was much less stressed than me. She’s such a strong.

Rosalynn Lasley (16:37)
Yeah.

Jennifer Cudmore (16:58)
person I really admire that about her. And I really think she was more just worried about taking care of mom than like finishing school. so, ⁓ so we, you know, we stayed because I wanted her to get finished and then, ⁓ you know, do graduation and whatever all needed to be done to fully finish with high school. But in the meantime, you know, she’s got activities and I’m working full time. And so we’re trying to pack boxes, just the two of us. so thankfully I had a lot of friends like from church or

Rosalynn Lasley (17:04)
Yeah.

Jennifer Cudmore (17:27)
One of my husband’s best friends came down and helped with some different things and it was, I was like, thank God I have so many great friends. I don’t know. Did you have very many people helping you guys with the packing or did you? Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (17:27)
Yeah.

Yes, definitely. I had friends that came

over and helped me paint because our realtor was like, you know, I don’t know that. I don’t remember something about the paint color. And then the color that I picked was not at all what I thought it would be. It was way brighter. But in the end, like who cares if the buyer doesn’t like it, they’ll paint it themselves. But at the time it seemed so important, you know. ⁓ And then I had some very good friends that came over and helped me pack or sometimes they would just

Jennifer Cudmore (17:55)
repaint it. Sure. Yes.

Rosalynn Lasley (18:03)
you know, sit with me while I was packing because it helped me not feel just stuck in my own head and like frozen and not knowing what to do next. And because of my injuries from breaking my back, I can’t lift the boxes. So that was a huge help for me too. Like I could pack the things in the way that I wanted them to. ⁓ But I needed somebody to move the boxes. And so just having that help was huge. ⁓ And you know, one friend in particular, she kept saying, I feel like I’m not really helping you. And I’m like, no, this is huge. Like you just being here.

Jennifer Cudmore (18:10)
Yes.

Bye!

Rosalynn Lasley (18:31)
helping me to stay motivated and then being willing to move the boxes for me is huge. And in the end, we didn’t really take much with us. You know, we sold or got rid of most of our things. But there was still a lot of like sentimental things that we wanted to pack up or deciding, you know, if we’re going to keep this or sell it or put it out on the curb for free, like still being able to decide all of that was really overwhelming. And so having somebody just to sit there with me while I’m trying to think through it was such a huge help.

Jennifer Cudmore (18:53)
Right.

Rosalynn Lasley (19:01)
Like I don’t know what I would have done without her.

Jennifer Cudmore (19:03)
I agree 100%. I have, I’m usually the take charge person who’s like, we’re going to do A, B and C and I would have friends come over and I’d be like, well, we really need to tackle the kitchen or the office. And I would feel a little bad that I wasn’t more organized, but I feel like God sent me the right people at the right time because it was like they knew.

I mean, I had one friend who had moved a few times and she’s like, well, here’s how you need to wrap that. And then like, she just was like, moving, moving. And I thought, this is exactly what I need right now. I just, it was like, I couldn’t make one more decision. And then another thing that was stressful is when you have pets and when you’re stressed out, your pets feel that. And then they see all these things leaving the house. I mean, we have the same issue of what are we taking? What are we selling? What are we packing? And, ⁓

Rosalynn Lasley (19:33)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Jennifer Cudmore (19:50)
That was a lot. And so as these things are leaving the house and your pets are like, what is happening right now? And I even had this one day, I accidentally dropped something. I think it was a hammer or something as we were kind of doing odds and ends to fix up the house. And my dog totally peed all over the floor. Like it scared her. She was having anxiety so bad. Just dropping a hammer was super stressful. And I was like, okay, I need to spend a few minutes loving on this dog because this,

Rosalynn Lasley (19:56)
Yeah.

Jennifer Cudmore (20:18)
I’m stressed out and she’s watching me, you know, so was like, I don’t know, there’s just so much about moving that it’s a lot.

Rosalynn Lasley (20:28)
We, and

one of our dogs, she’s always been anxious just from the time we’ve gotten her and we got her when she was like eight weeks old. So like we know she’s been cared for, so she just an anxious dog. But anytime we’re like doing the whole family is really deep cleaning here, she gets anxious. I think she thinks we’re moving again. Like she does not like it. Like if one or two of us, like if somebody’s cleaning the kitchen or somebody’s vacuuming, like intermittently it’s fine. But when all of us are doing like it.

day where everyone’s doing chores, she does not like it. She thinks something is wrong. We’re like, we’re fine. Nothing’s happening. We’re just cleaning because we’re messy. But she still gets really upset.

Jennifer Cudmore (20:56)
Aww.

Yeah.

I, that is just something I hadn’t thought about. hadn’t thought about how it was going to affect the animals. We had a dog and two cats, although I think the cats did much better with the packing piece of it. Once we got here, they were like not happy, but so I, thankfully I did have an amazing realtor who was super helpful and super, super, ⁓ just what’s the right word helped me make every next step.

Rosalynn Lasley (21:08)
No me.

Yeah.

Yeah. One for us.

Jennifer Cudmore (21:32)
I didn’t have to really think about it. She’d be like, okay, and then this and then that and then, so it wasn’t like I was spending hours and hours on the phone with Tim trying to figure out what we were gonna do. I mean, she really had a lot of great advice, a lot of great direction, a lot of great resources. And again, I just felt really taken care of, like the Lord was bringing me all the right people at the right time. What about you?

Rosalynn Lasley (21:54)
Yeah.

⁓ absolutely. And there was people that were eager to be helpful. And for me, I mean, I have my own trauma and stuff, so I’m reluctant to accept help because I’m like, what if this backfires or somebody is going to use it against me or it seems like I’m incapable. And so I have to rely on other people. And I don’t like that at all. That in itself is outside of my comfort zone. But having people genuinely, sincerely eager to help without any strings attached.

Jennifer Cudmore (22:08)
Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (22:22)
⁓ It made me incredibly grateful and then it allows like when you know somebody else that’ll be in this situation at some point you know what kind of things were helpful for you and so you know how to jump in like maybe I can’t lift boxes but I’ll watch your kids or I’ll do your dishes or you know just having people jump in and help gave me so much perspective on what it means to you know just have a tribe you know.

Jennifer Cudmore (22:34)
true.

Yeah, exactly. Another stressor for me, like you were talking about how you had ended up quitting your job and that was part of what helped you make the decision. I had actually just started a new job. I had only been there for, I don’t know, six months when we decided that we were gonna move. And so I was really afraid to talk to my boss because…

Rosalynn Lasley (22:59)
Mmm.

Yeah.

Jennifer Cudmore (23:11)
I loved my new job. I just loved it. I loved working for a clinic where I felt like we were really making a difference in the community. you know, knowing that I’m helping sick children, because it was, you know, it’s a pediatric specialty clinic. And so ⁓ just, I really believed in the mission and the vision of the company and the owner. I just think they’re really wonderful people. And then I’m like, I now I have to leave like this is awful. And so I was really scared to have that conversation with her.

Rosalynn Lasley (23:13)
Yeah.

Jennifer Cudmore (23:41)
And the moment I said, we’re considering moving to the East coast. And ⁓ she immediately brought up the concept of remote work. And I thought, well, as a manager, how can I remotely manage this team? And she had no reservations at all. And so once again, I was like, okay, that was totally God just giving me such an amazing boss who just totally trusted me to try this new thing. And basically, yeah, we’ll just try it.

till it doesn’t work anymore. then, so here I am almost four years later and it’s working. I only worked in the office 10 months before we moved. And now I’ve been doing it for, I’m almost at my five year mark, which I’m excited about. that was very stressful for me. I didn’t wanna have to tell them that I was gonna have to leave after getting this great opportunity. They took really good care of me. So, ugh.

Rosalynn Lasley (24:09)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, and for us,

like I had quit my job and then there’s a fear of like, well, how does that look on paper when you move and people are like, well, you haven’t been working for this length of time. And my husband, know, like he’d been at his job for such a long time that it was, you know, scary to think about starting over ⁓ and not really knowing where. Like we both left Alaska without jobs. Like we didn’t have jobs.

Jennifer Cudmore (24:53)
Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (24:59)
We moved in with my dad and my stepmom. didn’t have our own place. And so it was literally just a wing and a prayer. Like we had no idea which end was up. We had no idea what we were going to do moving forward. We just knew what we were doing wasn’t working anymore and we had to try something different. and I mean it’s been, I think three years now and it’s still crazy to me that like, wow, we really did it. I can’t believe it.

Jennifer Cudmore (25:06)
Yeah.

It’s so inspiring really for me, for someone who, you know, I tend to be really controlling. Like, I don’t think I could have left without knowing we both had jobs and we had a place to live. And so I just greatly admire that. I wish I could say that that, that I would have been able to do that. I really don’t know that I would have. I think that’s amazing that you

Rosalynn Lasley (25:43)
Well,

and if it weren’t for my dad’s stepmom and then of course my siblings too, being willing to let us live with them and you know, that impacts their life significantly. They’re giving up their space. They’re having extra people. You know, they have their own pets that don’t necessarily love new dogs in their space. And so they were greatly impacted and outside of their comfort zone by allowing us to, you know, flip our lives upside down and live in their world for a while while we figured it out. And so like we couldn’t have done it without them, you know.

Jennifer Cudmore (25:54)
true.

True, yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (26:11)
encouraging us and even just planting the seed of, you ever thought about? Like, no, I have not. You know, and if you knew about, you know, my relationship with my dad, which maybe we can cover it another time, the fact that I went from not speaking with my dad for years to living with him in just a short amount of time is also crazy. So it’s just, you know, a really big example of like, God is in control of our lives. And when we allow him to be fully in control, like wonderful things happen. But, you know, my whole life is

Jennifer Cudmore (26:17)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (26:40)
been lived in a way where I’ve been reluctant to fully let go of control and let him just do his own thing. So this is just, it still blows my mind that we’re here and that we’re doing well and we’re happy and healthy and that things have worked out. Cause I’ve always thought in the back of my mind, like what if it doesn’t work out? What if everything implodes? if we make a bad situation worse? And we just had to trust, we had nothing left at that point, but to just trust that it will be okay.

Jennifer Cudmore (26:46)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, you have no choice but to trust. That’s totally it. So I want to delve into more of just some of the specific challenges that you and I both faced. Some of them similar, some of them very different. But first, ⁓ we’re going to have to make this a two parter because we just have so much to cover with regards to the comfort zone. But let me just end part one with kind of a funny story. So my sister ended up ⁓ flying up.

Rosalynn Lasley (27:29)
Yeah.

Jennifer Cudmore (27:39)
to help me drive my car through Canada so that I wasn’t by myself. And we ended up, I wanted to take the dog with me because I felt safer having the animal in the car since we couldn’t have any weapons. Although for me that probably wouldn’t have taken them anyway. So. ⁓

Definitely lots of challenges even crossing the border because of COVID. I mean, they were super strict about a lot of things. But what happened for us is we were not allowed to stop anywhere. Obviously we had to stop for gas and they said that is the only stop we are allowed to make. And I was like, I don’t know how they’re gonna know where we stop or how we stop. But I was like definitely wanting to abide by their rules and recommendations. So, you

Rosalynn Lasley (28:19)
Mm-hmm.

Jennifer Cudmore (28:23)
pretty much the first half of driving the Alcan Highway is there’s nothing. Even half part of the road, it’s like gravel for miles and miles and miles. There’s no pavement. And so by the time we were like halfway through, we’re exhausted, know, we’re taking turns napping and driving, napping and driving. And so ⁓ I don’t remember exactly how long it took us to get through, but at one point I had dozed off. It was around 11 o’clock at night and my sister

Was driving and she said Jen wake up wake up ⁓ and so I kind of see some flashing lights and i’m like what’s going on and I had pulled my hoodie kind of down over my face to ⁓ block out some of the light while we were driving so could sleep and so I’m kind of trying to wake up and she’s like there’s police everywhere. There’s police everywhere and i’m seeing these blue lights flashing She’s like we didn’t take our covid test She’s she’s like they’re gonna stop and check and we didn’t take our covid test Because they had required you to take it and then call in right?

Rosalynn Lasley (29:10)
Mm.

Jennifer Cudmore (29:20)
And so I’m like trying to find my mask and she’s like, they’re stopping every car. They’re searching every car. So I’m trying to get this hoodie off. I’m trying to get my mask on. I’m trying to wake up. It was crazy. And so the policeman stops and she rolls down the window and he just says, Hey, we’re just looking for somebody. I just need to check the car. And we had that paper in the window that says we’re traveling through. Did they make you put a paper in your windows?

Rosalynn Lasley (29:43)
No, ⁓

they, we had to download like an app and I think that’s how they know like where you stopped and what you were doing. But we had an app that like tracks your movement. We had, we did have a paper, but it was, and I don’t even remember now at this point, but it was something and we had to go through one specific border exit into the U S. so yeah, it was, it was concerned. Well, and like they’d split us up at the border when we got into Canada.

Jennifer Cudmore (29:50)
Okay.

Gotcha. Okay.

Okay.

Gotcha. Okay.

Rosalynn Lasley (30:13)
to make sure that our stories matched. They wanted paperwork showing the proof that we’d sold our house. And I’m like, I have no idea where this is, like in this trailer full of stuff. So thankfully they allowed me to pull up on ⁓ like Zillow or something, the listing of our house being sold. And because it matched the address on my driver’s license, they verified that we had sold our house. But I was like, my gosh, this is crazy. And yeah, they’re splitting us up to make sure our stories match. And I’m like, what in the world is going like?

Jennifer Cudmore (30:13)
⁓

Yeah.

⁓

Rosalynn Lasley (30:40)
We don’t want to be here any more than you want us here. I promise you, we’re just going through. But yeah, it was close.

Jennifer Cudmore (30:40)
Yeah.

Yeah.

So the first thing that policeman did was he looked at the paper on the dash. So he knew we were traveling. And obviously I had a bunch of car full of stuff and then the little spot for the dog. And so I mean, he that’s all he said to us. He walked around the car, flashed the light everywhere and then had us go. So we were probably stopped for like 30 seconds, maybe a minute. But we’re driving away from there. I mean, lights flashing, cars stopping everywhere. We look at each other like

What just happened? We had so much nervous energy. I think we laughed for a good 10 minutes straight because we had panicked for no reason, but we were exhausted. We were in a country that we didn’t live in. They had all these rules that we weren’t following all the rules. it was just like all this stress laughter just kept coming out. And I don’t even think it was the stress of just the drive. I think it was the stress of the last few months. like, so that was one of the funniest parts of

Rosalynn Lasley (31:24)
Yeah

Yeah.

Like everything. Yeah.

Jennifer Cudmore (31:41)
of our trip was just driving through Canada and the stress and we got pulled over by the Canadian police and just makes for a cool story.

Rosalynn Lasley (31:48)
You’re like, I thought they were so friendly. Now we had a couple of weird instances

like that too, where we were like, what just happened? And ⁓ at some point, you know, I think it was our second day driving. We had zero service pretty much the entire day, wherever we were. And we drove past something in the road that looked super creepy. I’m like, I don’t know if that was a person or an animal or what it was, cause it was like dusk kind of. And for…

Jennifer Cudmore (32:10)
Okay.

Rosalynn Lasley (32:13)
It was just like this tiny little blip of time I had cell phone service. So I shared my location with my sister and I was like, if something happens to us, this is where we are. Because we hadn’t seen like anybody the whole time. There is some guy like hitchhiking in the middle of nowhere and saying like, my car broke, my car broke. Like we did not see a broken down car anywhere from the Alaska border into Canada all the way until Washington state. Like there was not a single broken down car. So like, are they trying to like.

Jennifer Cudmore (32:21)
Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (32:39)
steal our car? Like, I don’t know. It was super scary. I’m like, I just want to get out of here. Yeah. Yeah.

Jennifer Cudmore (32:41)
Don’t stop. Yeah. Yeah.

That Alcon Highway is something else. That’s for sure. But I’m glad that I can say that I did drive it. I think it was, was a fun adventure. anyhow, yeah, it’s not scary. I would have much preferred having my husband with me on that trip for sure. anyhow, okay. So we’re gonna, we’re gonna pause here, but we will be back next week.

Rosalynn Lasley (32:53)
Yeah, it’s beautiful when it’s not scary.

Yeah.

Jennifer Cudmore (33:08)
with finishing up our discussion on the comfort zone and all the challenges that come with that. So come back and see us next time. Thanks everybody.

Rosalynn Lasley (33:15)
Thank you. Bye.