Thoughts on a Tuesday

Life is always much harder and much more rewarding than I anticipate it to be. I don’t think I realized how much work would be required of our house or just how good it is to collapse on your pillow at night knowing that all the work and effort is going into a place and a home for your family. We hosted a baby shower exactly a week after we moved in and I know there’s mixed feelings on doing this (I have heard crazy, brave and you need to set boundaries among other comments) but it turned out lovely and it fit with the faster pace that life has been coming at us lately. I’ve had small victories at work which usually just lead to more work but it’s nice to be three minutes away. And eventually, life will slow down and we can look back on when we first moved into our house and be grateful. So in a nutshell. Life is good.

Home Ownership

is Amazing. I can’t even describe the feeling of walking in the door and realizing, I actually live here.  I am literally three minutes from the church where I work and today at lunch I drove to publix and bought all the stuff I needed for a yummy lunch, went home and walked Riley and sat on the couch with a book and ate lunch with time to spare. Soooo wonderful. We are having a baby shower this Sunday and even though everything is no where near done, it already feels like home.

C2C!

We got the best news yesterday and it stil hasn’t sunken in yet but we are clear to close! This means so many different awesome things to us. Riley can go for regular walks and there’s a big yard for her to run around. We can also officially potty train her outside since it doesn’t involve three flights of stairs! Everyone (and I mean everyone) is happy about this. I can also start cooking more regularly and have found a organic produce service that delivers to our place. Super excited about that. Also just having space is ridiculously exciting to me. We are going to host a baby shower pretty much right after we move in. This definetely feels like the next chapter of our lives.

Words of wisdom

It’s been a while since I’ve posted. Things here have been busy and I realized how many decisions each one of us has to make every single day. There are choices, more than our parents had, about how to communicate. Do you blog or facebook or text or twitter or meet for coffee or leave a message? What makes life most sincere? And choices about what is important. God family friends but a list doesn’t tell you how to unfold your day around them. Every day has a list. That which you must do and that which you want to do and several things that you start the day thinking you probably will not get around to. And somewhere hidden in every day is meaning. Maybe it was a hard lesson I learned. Maybe it was the fact that I kept walking even when stopping sounded good. Sometimes it’s sitting on a bench on a windy day with Riley perched on my lap and realizing there is time to breathe. Prayer can be a navigation through all of this. My friend said recently that our charge as Christ followers is this: what ever we do should either be a prayer or it should feel like a prayer. And it is with that thought I begin this day.

Prep

I am unofficially one of the worst packers you may meet. I have moved a total of three times in my life, (Florida, Baylor, with my hubby) and I can’t recall any real details about how I did it. It’s all a little hazy. I do remember the morning I was supposed to leave for england and I was still stuffing things in my suitcase. It is at this point that I make an encouraging list to keep my spirits up.

1. I love the idea of getting rid of things for my friend Rhonda’s awesome garge sale. I already have two trash bags filled with stuff. This equals progress.

2. I have no idea how to pack dishes or other valuable breakable things. I will not worry about that now and save it for later. Whew.

3. It’s fun imagining how much better all our stuff will fit in a house than a condo. It also makes it harder to throw stuff away.

4. We could put pink hearts on our christmas tree (sadly still up) and call it a valentine’s day tree.

5. How in the world do you pack stuff that you’re going to need pretty much every day? Should I regulate myself to a weeks worth of clothes and wear them for a couple weeks straight?

6. I’m done. Not sure if this is really even a list.

7. Dinner should be good tonight. I’m making panag curry.

Always important to end on a positive note.

(Insert life here)

Life is never going to be perfect. It is a relief just to see those words on the page. Life will be good. Life will be blessed. It will be a challenge and at times it will be triumphant. But not perfect. I had to make a choice between getting good medical insurance and taking a class a seminary. I believe I made the right choice. In a perfect world I could do both. In a perfect world I would know the best way to handle all the medical expenses. Instead I do the best that I can. And I know that God goes before me. I know that I am incredibly blessed and my life is more about fingerpainting than coloring within the lines. This is a day to be thankful, to choose to be encouraged and trust that I am right where I need to be.

A big big yard

I was thinking about something yesterday and I thought it was worth sharing. We have a puppy, Riley, who is 4 and a half months old. She is like any other puppy in that she loves to be outdoors, she loves the wind, she loves eating anything on the ground. I took her over my parent’s house and she loved spending the day there going on walks, and running around outside. She’s back home now and we keep her in the guest bathroom of our third floor condo and I bet she’s sad and thinks that place is so far away. I don’t get sad though because I know in a couple weeks she will have the biggest yard to run around in and she will always be able to see it through the door. I tell her all the time what is coming and how great it will be but I know she doesn’t understand and she won’t until I can put her little paws on the grass. A lengthy comparison I know but I am almost sure this is how God feels about us. He knows the greatness in store and encourages us to look past our circumstances but we struggle until we can actually see change happening in our lives. I’m going to take Riley for a nice long sunny walk today. It’s my way of saying hang in there, just a little more waiting. I bet God does this for me everyday.

Sowing

I find myself in a frequent position of not being able to explain what is happening in my life. This idea goes along with the fact that I don’t deserve or am entitled to anything so my search for a reason becomes futile. You would think at a point I would stop searching.  I am however, a feeler first and a thinker second according to Myers-Briggs so here is what I have been ruminating on: sowing. I can grasp this concept easily, that if you are more concerned with someone else’s plight and help them, you give God the room to work in your own life.  Sowing sticks close to reaping. You rarely see one without the other. Last year when we lost the contract on our house our friends successfully purchased their first home and Mike and I were in the car driving over to go help them tear up their floor.  The weight of that choice felt heavy but more than that it felt like the right thing to do. At that moment it was the next right step and one our thirsty hearts were eager to take. So were we sowing at that point? I pray that we were. That not only our hands but our hearts were in the position God wanted them to be. My coworker announced his wife was pregnant and for the first time in a while, all I could feel was their joy. I think God is showing me my next right step.

The greatest lesson of my life…so far

A lot has been happening recently and life has had such a whirlwind quality to it that I wasn’t sure how to write about it. Until now that is. It has to do with a lesson God has demonstrated to me many many times and I am still surprised to recognize it in my current circumstances.

When I was in my last year of high school, I was chosen to be a camp counselor at a UMC camp. The whole process had God’s hands all over it. I applied after the entire team had already been chosen. An interview process that usually took 1 month was completed in two days and my spot was secure. Until, I backed up my brand new Jetta into my sister’s equally brand new car on the way to pick up a friend for church.  Suddenly I was in so much trouble and was presented with the solution of not going to camp and getting a real job to pay off the damage to both of our cars. I was so confused and all I could think of was how much I thought this was what God wanted and now it was disappearing right before my eyes. I did the only thing I could think of. I prayed through all my tears, God I thought this was You, I thought You wanted me to do this, but if it isn’t then show me what You want me to do next and I’ll do it. Going to camp doesn’t mean anything if it’s not where you want Me to be. That, at the time, and even now was a hard prayer to pray. I called the insurance for our cars and since they were on the same policy they covered all the damages. Even a thousand dollars worth. I went to camp that summer knowing without any doubt that I was right where God wanted me to be. And the lesson was this : When you are ready to give it all up, God gives it all back. And then some.

Fast forward to last year.  We were pregnant, had a contract on a house, Mike got a promotion at work. Then one by one everything started to fall. We lost the baby, we lost the house, Mike got switched to the sales department and we began to make plans for what would happen if he lost his job. And there was a point where I thought about whether or not God was abandoning us. What  I realized though was He didn’t, it was just a season of no, or not yet. But it was hard, really hard and I remembered that prayer I prayed after I wrecked my car into Stacey’s. My life felt like a wreck. But it was still His. And I would accept His answer no matter what. I would accept His will above mine. And He did it again, When you are ready to give it all up, God gives it all back. And then some.  Mike has what I would consider his dream job, but he would have never gone looking for it if his job didn’t turn into such a struggle. We’re nearing the closing of our house that is unlike anything we ever looked at or considered we could afford. Especially the house we were under contract for and didn’t get. And I have all the faith in the world that when it is His time we will have little tiny feet crawling around our house. This may be the greatest lesson of my life.

We’re moving!

I have been kinda hesitant to write this but God has been so apparent through this whole process. Right before Christmas time we found this incredible house. After we went to go see it we sat down and figured out our best offer and submitted it. This is a bank owned property so they came back and told us they had received other offers and we needed to submit our highest and best offer. Our offer was already the highest and best one we could do and we got a response back saying thanks but we have decided to go forward with another offer. Okay. We continued looking for houses and found one in a great location that was doable but it would take a lot of work to get it the way we wanted. We were driving home talking about it, pretty confident we would put an offer on it when this feeling just hit me. It didn’t feel right. We could justify all the reasons why we should buy this house but I couldn’t shake the feeling. When we got home Mike suggested we do another search online. I looked and there wasn’t anything really and then I decided to pull up our house we didn’t get. There’s no reason to do this other than torture yourself but it showed it was still available. Long story short, the first offer fell through and they put it back on the mkt for a lower price. We offered, accepted their counter and are going to close on or before february 22nd. Only God could have helped us get this house. Standard houses in florida in our price range are typically 1300 square feet. This one is 2200 with a fireplace, 2 car garage, huge yard for the puppy and 5 bedrooms 3 1/2 baths. Thanks upon thanks doesn’t begin to express how grateful and humbled we are. Without further ado- Our new house.