Struggles

Well, I've heard it said that honesty is the best policy and transparency is healing so here goes:

Have you ever dreamt about something for so long that you could practically taste it? You thought if I could just have that desire then life would be perfect. You wouldn't struggle anymore...You'd be so happy and never complain again ect.... You know the drill.

Well, that is how Joel and I have been with moving by our family. For 8 years we dreamt about it and thought if only... every time we would leave here to go home we always felt a let-down. We thought if we could move here by everyone life would be perfect.

Now that we are here I am discovering it isn't as I had imagined. It isn't perfect. So disappointment is occurring as my dreams have to match reality. I didn't take into account how much I would miss my old life, and how everyone here already has thier lives established. I miss my neighbors and going outside for a walk and running into tons of people I knew who all lived in our development so we would stop and chat. I miss the excitement of being close to the zoo and shopping and different events that came to town. I miss my friends and I just miss normalcy.

Our house here that we are renting isn't horrible but also isn't great. It's not MY house. We sleep in a living room right now as the house only has two bedrooms. Sometimes I feel like my walls are caving in on me. Everything is so small and we have 5 people living in this little space. We are working on the basement to make a room for us and a bathroom and a living room but it stinks down there like old musty, moldy, basement so I am just praying that goes away or otherwise I am going to have a really hard time moving down there.

We also have discovered we have a mouse problem. At first they were just downstairs and even that really creeped me out. Now they are in my kitchen. Literally 10 ft. from where I am sleeping in the living room. I feel intruded on. Maybe I've been away from the country long enough that I've turned into a city girl.

We just discovered that our deep freeze has been unplugged for several weeks so every night it gets frozen again as the temp drops and then during the day it half way thaws again so we just lost hundreds of dollars of food-- it makes me sick. Joel works so hard to provide and we are so careful with where and how we spend our money to make it stretch and then this....

My headaches have come back with a vengeance. They started 3 weeks after moving here. I'm so nauseous with them that I can't move and if I do I throw up. I'm super dizzy and have lots of pressure in my head. With them- my anxiety has made a reappearance too. We have no health insurance.


I'm writing all this to hopefully feel better. I know that getting stuff off your chest can help immensely so I am trying it. I still feel like we did the right thing because my husband strongly does and I trust him. There is good here too. I just have to look harder to find it. I love that I am growing closer to my sister-in-law and able to do things with her. I also love being able to watch all our nieces and nephews grow up. I love that my brother and his wife plan to move back within a few years. I love helping out our families and just being here for whatever arises. I love the home school coop up here. It is a huge, valuable network of families that teach basically everything. It is great... I do struggle with my decision to home school though and at times feel like I could be holding Abby back from being her social, active little self. I love the Awana program here and how easily we slipped back into church feeling like we never left. I love our yard and our huge oak trees and our swings we have in them. I love all the nature around us... we have deer in our yard pretty much every night.

So...No, it isn't perfect and we still struggle but the more I talk to God about it, it isn't meant to be perfect. Nothing is... not until Heaven. For us to even think we can come near perfection is a farce. It isn't going to even come close. For now, we just moved into another imperfect situation but at least this time we can be close to family. I do think that is what God has for us in this life. To be held up by others (family if you can have it), otherwise others in the family of God. That's what we were created for... to love and to be in service to others.


So through all this, I have discovered that we have to have the struggles in order to not become calloused to the blessings.