We still have nowhere to go. I have been LOOKING and LOOKING and LOOKING. It turns out it is difficult to devote all of your time to finding a place to live and pack your current residence, oh and parent those pesky children that for some reason can't feed and clean themselves. So I've been spending all of my time parenting and looking (which means not packing). And apparently it's all in vain. We've gotten NOWHERE! If you had told me that selling my house would go pretty smoothly (besides being a giant pain in the rear and getting locked out with 2 kids and a dog) and finding a new house would be the hard part I would not have believed you for one second. But that's how it's going. Sigh.
Last week I asked for packing advice on facebook and I got the MOST AMAZING AND THOROUGH responses! I'm so thankful for such kind, loving, and knowledgeable friends. I am going to do what everyone says, just as soon as I do any packing of any kind. Sigh.
So here's where I'm at. Everyone says pray, believe God has the perfect house for you. Believe you me, I have been. I've been up in the middle of the night feeding Eli, having a breakdown because I'm soverytiredwiththeknowledgethatEliwillnevereversleepthroughthenight and soverystressedoutandpanickybecauseIhavetwoweekstogetmyfamilyandthingsoutofhereandIhavenoideawherewearegoing. And I've been begging God to do something, anything, make this work out somehow. And I have believed He would. But nothing has happened. Worse than nothing, every single thing has fallen through. Prime example: we found what appeared to be an AMAZING house on water, fenced, 5 bedrooms, reasonable price, a bit dated. Close enough to Ty's school next year and work for Jerry. It appeared to have been empty for years and on the market for sale since 2010, on the rental market since February. It's now June. I called the guy before 9am this morning to schedule a showing. He told me he got an application that looks good for it yesterday. YES.TER.DAY!!!!!!! Every single time we think something might work out, we're a day late and a dollar short. Frustration does not even begin to describe it. I truly do not feel like we're being that picky, and our budget is pretty broad. We need space. We're willing to pay for it. Where is it?
So here's where I'm at. Does God love me? Yes! Does God take care of me? Yes, absolutely! Does God care exactly how many square feet of space would be ideal or whether or not a certain layout would help or hinder Eli's napping? Eh, there's a lot of suffering in the world, A LOT of hungry, homeless people. I am not one of them. Frankly, I hate that this house business is taking so long because I feel like I should be more available to help others. So is God concerned with those specific things that would make a house work or not work for my family? I'm just not sure.
Think about when a child receives a gift. They either get excited or they tell you why it isn't exactly right (please do not let that be my children, ever!). I don't want to be that kid to God that tells him what I have isn't exactly what I wanted, or there's something wrong with it.
At the same time, we saw 2 houses yesterday that we could make work for us (and didn't have a problem with our giant dog). They wouldn't solve all of the problems we have in our current arrangement, but we could get in pretty much immediately, and deal with the layout. But if we wait very long they'll both be taken.
Jerry wants to keep looking. I'm okay with that in the way that I agree we haven't found anything in the same ballpark as "just right", but I'm SO NOT OKAY with it in the way of we have to vacate this house SOON! On top of that, I SWEAR every time I find something that I think could work, my wonderful husband tells me something completely different from our last conversation about houses. And we've had about 1,000 conversations about houses at this point. So I am LOSINGMYEVERLOVINGMIND!
I even tried to call an apartment complex this morning to get a plan B going, and I couldn't even do that right. I pressed 0 for a leasing agent, as prompted, and then there was dead silence for an extended time, and then simultaneously someone answered AND voicemail started talking to me. WHUCK?
All of these things are telling me to wait. And I have been waiting. But at what point does waiting become practicing stupidity?
A lot of people have encouraged us to get a POD or a SAM (pick your delivered storage container of choice) and while I think that's a good idea, it doesn't solve the where to go problem. Remember that I called an apartment complex today and the technology broke. My mom offered for us to move in with her and to take her room (because Eli naps well in a pack n play in her ginormous, dark, and quiet walk in closet. Don't judge, the closet is bigger than a lot of bedrooms I've seen.) and that she and my Dad could sleep on the pullout sofa or the guest room. My mom is incredible!! But I told her she might not want to offer her bed without having any idea how long we'd be staying. At this point, it could be a while.
So we wait. If we don't have a plan by this weekend you can find me in a psychiatric hospital because I can't handle much more of this.