I blame the garden

We recently received a letter that changed our lives. I won’t go into the details, but let me just sum up by saying we will be moving again. In five weeks or less.

Hubs left with the boys for scout camp the day after we found out. I was home alone for a week to look for a house. The only thing I found was that there is literally nothing available that meets our needs. Wah wah wah.

To cope, I did the only thing I could do in such times of stress. I did a project. I started refinishing my dining room table. It’s a great stress relief to sand and scrape. It took my mind off the worry. I’ve said it before but it’s never been truer than now: Projects help me cope.

Stripping, sanding, staining, sealing, painting all help to take my mind off my problems and helps me think of solutions in a way that I can’t do when I’m just focused on the problem at hand.

I wish I had left good enough alone when I had the table at the point you see here, but I messed it up. I used a combined stain and poly for the top and it’s awful. I need to strip it back off, but I’m out of time and energy to tackle it again. It will have to wait until after we move.

In the next day or two, I will show you the master bedroom that will never be. I finished the wood wall a week before the letter. *cough-swear word-cough*. It’s beautiful, too. Okay, fine. Here’s a sneak peek.

I also made a little shelf to hold the blessing gown I made back in the day for my babies.

I thought I had a new job lined up, but I ended up not getting the job. I’m completely okay with that, even though I would have loved the job. I am hoping that a house that needs our love and care is waiting for us to find it and my new job will be restoring a home for our family.

Finally, I really do blame the garden. Any time we have planted a garden in the first year we have been in a house, we have moved before we could harvest it. Yes, I am enjoying my tomatoes as they ripen, but my corn, my pumpkins, my WHITE pumpkins will belong to someone else.

It is the curse of the garden that has plagued us for 24 years. You’d think we’d wizen up by now, but obviously, you’d be wrong. Hope springs eternal for us.

I look forward to finding the blessing God has lined up for us this time around. I am trying, desperately, to hold on to that thought. It is hard. Very hard. But I do know that God can and will answer the prayers of our heart and I am hoping this an answer to some of our other prayers and that everything will work itself out.

While I have been riding the Panic Peace Roller Coaster for several days, I am settling in to more feelings of peace than panic. I do know that God provides. I’ve seen it far too many times in my life to doubt. I am definitely feeling the peace of the prayers that our friends and family who have been praying for us. I’m so blessed to have so many good, faithful people in my life.

In the coming weeks I’ll be packing and getting ready to move. We have Katie coming back in early August and I wish we could have been moved and settled before that happened. It will be a full month of change in August. Apparently, that’s a yearly tradition for us since our life kind of blew up in our face last August as well.

So, I may have to leave behind the bike planter, as well as the burgundy doors.

I will walk away from my pumpkins and the campground and the flowers and all the repairs and improvements we have made in the last year. The owners are welcome to them with our blessings.

They can keep their repaired chicken coop,

but my girls are coming with us.

I’m looking forward to a new future and to see the hand of God working in my life. If you are of a praying persuasion, I’d appreciate any prayers you want to send our way.