Greg and I just saw Inception last night, and I'm still recovering... Fabulous movie, kept me up a way too long time thinking about it. I'd be on the verge of unconscious and a new thought would jolt me awake to join my theories of what exactly was going on (and the later it got, the more my thoughts turned to... "if Greg does something weird in his sleep, I am absolutely going to jump out of my skin.)
Perhaps that's my disclaimer if I make little or no sense...
In writing a little at a time about my "foggy period," I'm trying to figure out where the beginning is...
Greg and I spent a week painting our new house and fixing extreme issues that came along with our beautiful but troubled foreclosure while our daughters stayed in San Antonio with grandparents. This was it... the beginning of our new beginning.
After living with Greg's gracious brother and sister-in-law and my niece and nephew for 4 months, we had our own home again (sort of, thanks to Greg's parents spotting us in an economy that wouldn't extend a home loan to us in any form). We were still trying to figure out what a steady source of income would look like, practically speaking. Greg had a part-time job at our wonderful new church and a business partnership beginning with his brother, but steady income at this point was $1000 a month (not what banks want to see).
I know a lot of people have this story element somewhere, especially in the past few years, but this shook us pretty hard; we had never dealt with such financial insecurity and future obscurity. We dipped into savings for carpet (HAD to be done), paint, and necessary appliance replacements. And with this home came my expectation for a renewed sense of identity and purpose for me as mother, wife, and woman in my own home.
Back a little further without nitty-gritty details (not because I don't wish to share, just because I don't want to infringe on someone else's "story" with my own projections)...
We had just left a difficult ministry fit in a small town in Kansas (we were there for 3 1/2 years) without a plan B or C in place. We knew it was time to go and then the timing was pressed upon us ("you have two more weeks"), so with no Plan beyond knowing we had loving family in Dallas and San Antonio and Iowa and a church in Iowa that still considered us part of their family, we packed up in a fog and tried to make sense of what was supposed to happen next.
A quick run-down of God's orchestration during that time - within two days of hearing we had two weeks left, the following happened:
Our church in Iowa (Greg was youth pastor there for about 7 years) let us know that the elder board voted to pay off our minivan and provide 3 months of health insurance premiums and to offer one of the homes the church owned as a place for us to live while we "found what was next." We opted to move to Dallas because of family and connections there, but we were overwhelmed with gratefulness at their financial support during our transition. Our amazing orthodontist in Kansas wiped our remaining balance for Abby's braces off the books. A pastor friend of ours from another church let us know they were bringing in a new staff member and his family who were looking for a house. This family offered to buy our house before we ever put a sign in the yard. Gracious friends from Kansas were incredibly generous as they sent us with financial gifts from their own pockets.
And we realized as we drove to Dallas with my dad and brother driving the moving van, that the non-Plan next part of our story had us going in completely debt-free without our initiating any bit of that. And although the free-fall in the fog felt weird, I knew the big poofy-bounce house thing was at the bottom...
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