The Journey

If we’re ever gonna get to this Happy Healthy Home I strive to have then we have to start somewhere.
First step to a Happy Healthy Home started family walks in the evenings. We had supper, gave the kids baths, and then decided to take a few laps around the apartment complex. I’m hoping we can do that every night. A nightly walk will actually do several things. Besides the basic function of helping get the family healthy it also gives us extra family time, and gets me and the girls out of the house (even if it is just literally outside the house). Having two kids under the age of three makes it hard for one person to go anywhere during the day. On occasion we do meet up with my friends and their kids for an outing but on those occasions I have help. By myself it’s easier just to stay home than try to pack everything and everyone up for something as simple as going to the store. So the walk around the parking lot is a good help for my sanity.
Step two to a Happy Healthy Home is potty time. This might seem a bit odd to most but I feel getting potty time under control will really help our family function better. We currently have two children in diapers, our two year old and our 2 month old. So we will be making a change with both of them. Our two year old has now started potty training. We have a potty at our house, a potty at her nana and papaw’s. we have big girl panties ready, her own wipe container ( which will be decorated soon) for her bathroom, and as soon as we find them cloth training pants. With our littlest one we will be switching to cloth diapers. Still researching to find the system that’s right for our family. I will write a post on our potty time journey with more details soon.
Step three to a Happy Healthy Home is financial security. There that’s the easy part, saying it. Now onto the hard part, living it. In an effort to get financial security me and the hubs will be taking a Dave Ramsey financial university class at a local church in September. I’m excited about it, hubby is a little iffy on it just because its not some financial expert teaching the class but just church members. I’ve researched Dave Ramsey methods before and I like, and already use, several of the methods but it’ll be nice to really know how they are supposed to work and put it all together. About a year ago I got a credit report for each of us. Our credit is pretty horrible. Mine from a messy divorce and my husbands from a little too adventurous adolescence and early adulthood. Nothing that can’t be fixed w it’s time but we certainly couldn’t get a decent loan right now. The goal is to learn a lot in this class, put the methods into practice, and be almost debt free in a year.

There are certainly many more steps in our Happy Healthy Home journey but we will take those steps when The Lord is ready to lead us toward them. For now we will just do the best we can with what The Lord has provided us and wait for further inscription from him.

Fresh Start

In ode to my most recent post "Rain" I've decided to start fresh. 
I owe a lot of that to my husband for taking the family to see an evangelist that he's seen before when he was younger. We checked his schedule and saw he would be somewhat local to us on Sunday so we decided to go see him. Being raised Baptist it was DIFFERENT to say the least. The evangelist was what I would consider a modern Pentecostal preacher. But I did learn a ton from his sermon, not just spiritually but historically as well. Some things I've read for years in the bible one way I realized meant something totally different due to the translation for the time period it was written in. I'm going to have to transition in baby steps because of the great radical differences, but I'm open to a new set of teachings. I've never seen my husband so into a church service or so "on fire" for The Lord as I saw during that sermon. 

In addition to a fresh start of our families spiritual life I've decided to have several fresh starts in our home life as well.  These fresh starts have prompted us to start looking into moving. Not necessarily moving "away" but moving somewhere better for our family. We've been too dependent on our extended family, not that there is anything wrong with that, but for where we are in our family we need some separation from them. If we lived just far enough away to not have them there for every beck and call we could learn how to depend on each other more. 
Our apartment lease is up in October and we will start looking then. Won't be able to buy anything just yet but looking to rent something for a year or so. 

Even though its August it's almost as if we've started a new year in our family. We've launched into several new beginnings for our family and I can't wait to see where we will be this time next year. 

Rain

You know the old saying “when it rains it pours”? Well that is defiantly true with our family right now.
Rain is a funny thing. Rain lets me know that God has a sense of humor. You either need it or don’t. Right now our area is in dire need of rain. The lakes are down, water rations have been set, and a burn ban in effect to prevent fires from getting out of hand due to the drought. And although we’ve had a small shower here and there its not been enough to make an impact on the lack of rain we’ve had. And as badly as we need rain there are other areas that need it to stop raining. Flooding seems to have been more frequent this year due to rain in certain areas. In both cases the rain has a negative effect on the people and places that it’s needed or not needed. This, perhaps, is the reason we use that adage I stated above. It implies a negative association with rain.
This is of course a “worldly” meaning for rain. God uses the rain to cleanse, purify, and renew us and the world we live in. You know the look and smell after a good summer shower? When everything looks and smells a little fresher and cleaner? This is the rain I like to think about. Sometime I feel like I just need to stand in the rain and let God wash over me and renew me in my thoughts, and actions. It almost feels like a fresh starts. Live life, mess up, rain, start over.

In fact when I was married to my ex husband and he told me he wanted a divorce I was obviously devastated. I went to my parents and more or less sat in what used to be my bedroom crying, not crying, crying some more. I wanted him back. I was willing to do anything, including giving up ever having children. After about a week of separation and contemplation and prayer we met up to discuss things. Going into it I wanted him back still, and I didn’t have the strength to go on without him. During our meeting it began to rain, and something happened during that talk. Somehow God let me see what he had planed for me. He let me know it was okay to let go, to move on, to have a fresh start. I gathered up the courage during that talk to stand up for myself and I let go of the marriage that day. After the conversation had ended I just went outside and stood in that rain. I’m not sure what compelled me to do that as I haven’t done something like that since I was a kid. I just stood there with my mouth open staring up at the heavens and thanking God for allowing me to let go. God renewed me through that rain. He cleansed me of the marriage that was weighing me down spiritually. I got my fresh start standing in the rain that day.

As you all know we’ve really been struggling lately. Auto Insurance has been canceled but thanks to family we will be getting that taken care of. Hubby wakes up this morning to head to a job and his truck is gone. Re-possessed while we were sleeping last night. Everything still in it, tools, computer, satellite radio my parents got him for Christmas, and lots of paperwork. After many phone calls, the conclusion…we need to come up with about $2000 by Monday.
Any ideas?
We’ve been selling as much of our possessions as we possibly can, hubby has been working where and when he can. We are just praying with all our might that his job starts soon so we can get back up on our feet. All extra prayers are greatly appreciated as well.
I feel like the saying “when it rains it pours” pretty much sums up our lives right now. While the “pouring rain” is seemingly pushing us further and further
down I feel our family needs the “pouring rain” to wash over us, renew us, and give us a fresh start.
What that fresh start may be I don’t know, but God does. And as hard as it is, and believe me it’s hard, to trust that everything will work out and God has a plan for our little family in his timing.

Lord, bring on the rain!

Update: This was originally written on July 26 at about 2pm and later transferred to my blog after editing. Later that same day it did begin to rain and after a really short shower there appeared the most vibrant full rainbow in the sky. I saw it as I was talking, and crying, to one of my best friends on the phone. I just looked out the back window and there it was, the biggest sign from God I could ask for. Rainbows are God’s way of letting you know everything will be alright. It’s not alright yet but he has a plan and we just have to have faith. I’m thankful he gave me a little hint that he’s still got it under control.