I'm not a leaver...

We still do not have a specific timeline on this move.  Some days that seems to be the crux of my anxiety and others I'm thankful that we are still tucked away here at home.

Regardless, it is onward we go.

There are so many things we need to have done before we get an appraisal and agent.  Those lists are made and started.  Two nights ago, my husband asked me why I was rushing to get the house taken care of when we didn't have a specific timeline.

Well, my loving, but-oh-so-content to keep floating on the river of denial husband, it is the right thing to do.  The work has to be done, so why wait?

Besides my overly OCD, I will not procrastinate, let's get this show on the road ways, I have never been the leaver.  I have been the one who gets left.

We have lived in the same place for over 15 years.  Whether it was neighbors or friends, we have been the ones to stay.  In 15 years, we've been left a lot.  Whether the friend left for a new job or moved far away, we have been through the sending them off thing over and over.

It is fair to say that I have been through it enough to learn a few things.  I've seen it first hand or I have the benefit of hearing the friend's reflection after they had gone.

There is a lot of stuff to do to the house.  It's the most miserable part of this process.  Doing hard work that we hadn't planned for and would have eventually done as time allowed.  It's messy and not fun, but it has to be done. 

I want to get this part done and out of the way.  Once it's done, we don't have to stress over the timeline.  Once the house is ready to go on the market, then it won't matter if we have only 1 month or 6 months before we move.  In reality, his company could tell us tomorrow that we have 30 days to get to Ohio.  We don't want to get into that super stressful situation of him having to commute and leaving me with all this stuff on my shoulders.

That's absolutely the number 1 reason to do it now.  Selfishly, I have another reason that doing it now is important to me.  I want us to be able to enjoy the time we have left here. 

As I said to my husband just last night, we cannot enjoy any of the time we have left if we are stuck at home every single weekend working on the house. 

There is so much we want and need to do.  We need to spend as much time as possible with my husband's parents.  His mom is declining so fast that each time we see her, we know it's as good as it gets.  We need to spend time with them while she's at least functional, even if she doesn't know who we are.

There are places here that we would love to go.  We love Presidential libraries/museums.  There are several within driving distance that we haven't seen.  I love aquariums and I have yet to visit the new one here in town.  I have no clue if we will get to do any of those things or not.  It's not the end of the world if we don't.

As of right now, I am supposed to get my niece and nephew over their spring break in a few weeks.  I want to enjoy every minute with them, knowing our time is so limited as it is living only two hours away. 

We want to see all Kent's siblings and nieces and nephews as much as we can. 

We both have friends we want to see and spend time with before we leave. 

My friends are my family.  I have some that are like immediate family and some that are more distant relatives that I only see a couple times a year and even a few that I only see every couple years.  But, I love them all.  I want to spend as much time in their presence as possible.  I want to soak in their love and acceptance so that I can find the confidence and strength to start over.

We still want to find ways to serve our church and church family until we move.  We love our church.  We want to remain involved and focused on where God has us and will use us.

I don't want to look back at this time after it's passed us by and regret the time we had.  I don't want to procrastinate with the big things so long that they become our only focus.  I don't want to look back and wish I had seen this person or done that thing.

It is so funny that this year I am already thinking about my birthday.  Ick!  I never think about my birthday this far in advance.  Oddly enough, I usually hate it and it's this terrible thing.  Not this year.  I want a party.  So not the way I normally am.  It's not a significant birthday this year.  I will be 39 years old.  But the people I love and want to celebrate my milestone birthday with next year won't be with me.  So I want a party, a Yay! I'm almost 40 birthday party.  It isn't so much that I want it to celebrate me as I don't really feel I'm worthy of being celebrated.  It's that I want one last time with all my friends, celebrating something fun. 

So much to do.  I'm just not a leaver.  It's a new way of thinking about things.  I want to use what I have learned.  I want to embrace this season.  I want to make the most of this season.  I don't want regrets.  I want to head into the unknown with more smiles and wonderful memories than tears and stress.

Wildfire

Evidently if you want to see how fast gossip is spread, you tell your closest friends that you are moving.  Not that I am angry, just disappointed.  I also don't necessarily blame those we told as much as the people they told.

Facing a move across several states is stressful enough.  It's also not something we had planned to share outside our immediate social circle until we had a finalized timeline.  Until this past weekend, we had told a few close friends and two family members. 

It was expected that those people would share with their families as appropriate.  No big deal.  Then I found out that it was being discussed at my previous church with a large group.  Then one by one, I was getting emails and facebook posts and text messages from friends who were a bit upset that they had heard it from the rumor mill.

Ugh!

I am a pretty smart cookie, sometimes.  It was fairly easy to trace back the sources.  For the most part, it was innocently shared by some of our closest friends and then it spread like wildfire.  I'm disappointed in those people. 

I know nothing was done out of malice, it's a relatively simple topic.  It was just extra stress to have tell more friends and family before we were ready. 

I will say though that the response has been overwhelmingly positive and encouraging.  Those who were sad to hear it are also those people who we will be sad to leave. 

Some of the responses caused me to chuckle.  Don't get me wrong, they were encouraging and they were from people who have been through the same thing.  It is just comical to me that sometimes people on the other side of a trial forget what it was like to be in the midst and the things that weren't helpful.  They often forget all the crappy part and spew those things they learned on the other side.  That's never helpful.

There have been some great things shared that are helpful.  Keep in mind, neither of us have ever sold a house.  I have never purchased a house.  We have never moved as a couple anywhere together!  Some of the information is great.  Remember to change your address with the city and county offices you live in.  Plan for personal property taxes to be paid as usual, even after you move.  Make sure ask if there are HOA dues for the house you will potentially buy.  That stuff....incredibly helpful. 

My goodness, that list of things to do isn't getting any shorter with me sitting here!

House Overwhelm

I think I may lose my mind through this whole process of moving and we’ve barely started. We are still waiting for the relocation package to be finalized and to us in writing.


My husband would be happy with that being months down the road, me not so much. The longer it takes to get to the moving part of this relocation, the more time I have to spend apart from my husband while he commutes to Ohio and back at his company’s beckon call.

It is so easy to look at houses for sale and daydream about the other side of this process. I have found a couple houses that would be absolutely perfect for us. That is the fun part, the one and only fun part of this.

Yesterday, we walked through the house room by room and made lists of everything that needs to be done. This is stuff that has to be done before we can have an appraiser or real estate agent walk through our house.

Keeping in mind, each room has a page and it is larger print, I still have 12 pages. 12!!!!!!!!! I don’t even know where to start. This is where I am starting today. Putting my frustration into words, while I cry my sad and angry tears over a cup of vanilla chai. I seriously don’t know what else to do at the moment.

I am definitely having a “my bath tub is going to fall through the floor” moment here.

We have done a decent job since our crisis last year with the bathroom. Once we got the bathroom fixed/remodeled, we slowly did things around the house as our budget allowed. We live on a very tight budget, not much to spare.

Mid last year, my husband lost one of his extra jobs. Since then, we don’t travel and have nothing planned. We have literally sunk our extra money into slowly fixing what was left to do to the house. Our plan, save, fix, save, fix, save, fix….

This relocation thing puts all our plans aside and puts us into semi-hyper speed in doing things we hadn’t planned or budgeted for at all.

I’m just being incredibly real here….

I’ve made some stupid mistakes. I got us in a financial bind. This relocation is going to provide us some relief that we have worked on for a very long time. Unfortunately, the relief will come on the other side of it and we will still be on the painfully tight budget until then.

It all seems too big for me. I know truths that apply to even something as trivial as this. God will supply everything we need to do everything He has called us to do. There is nothing impossible. God will make a way. But, I know I need God to help my unbelieving heart. The weight of it all feels big enough to crush me.

New Adventure

I have a ton of things that I need to be doing.  Cleaning, cooking, mopping, crafting.  Ok, so some things I'd rather be doing and some I need to do.  But I have to capture this moment.  I need to remind myself that emotions will not kill me and it is ok.

Where do I start?  I am overwhelmed with truth, stuff and what lies ahead.

A week ago, we got word that there was a huge push for my husband to move to Ohio for work.  A little less optional than it had been in the past, but still not anything definitive.  Yesterday, we found out that this was no longer optional.  His current position is being eliminated and the only option is to move to Ohio.  Still not having anything in writing, cause that's the point we know it's for real, we have lived in a bit of denial/emotional distance.  Today it got super real!  He met with HR and has details.

Laid out before us now are the details of how life is going to go, according to my husband's company.  They are setting us up with relators in both places.  My husband has to go find us temporary housing. There is a company who will be coming in our house over the next couple months and packing everything we own and moving it to another part of the country.

I'm not joking when I say that this is so overwhelming that I feel dizzy.  In the words of a very dear friend, this just got real y'all.

Surprisingly, I have been the strong one over the past week.  I've been the one pointing my husband to God.  God is over it all.  We will go where He directs and make clear for us.  My husband has been the one devastated and emotional.  

This will be the furthest he has ever been from his family.  My husband needs to feel connected and loved.  Despite my best efforts, I know I am not enough for him.  To leave all he has known his entire life and the area he has lived in for nearly 20 years is gut wrenching for him.  

Not until just now has the emotional side of this hit me.  I've been so matter of fact and certain that God will take care of me here or there, that I haven't let myself think about the emotional side of it.

All my friends are here.  I have some of the best friends ever!  One of them I've known for 15 years, some of them less.  It's taken a long time for me to get close to them and likewise for some of them.  I've lived life with them.  We've loved each other through good, bad, easy and hard.  They are all here.

I have, at best, a strained relationship with my brother and his family.  But, it is all I have in my family.  It's fragile and slowly being rebuilt.  In reality, it will be good for me to have a longer distance between the rest of my estranged family.

We finally found a church that we love!  We have only been there since September, but feel at home.  We feel like a part of family there.  It's something we both have longed for and desparately needed.  Neither one of us are ready to leave it.  

Believe me, I know everything I have been saying to my husband for the past week is true.  What is too big for us is never too big for God.  There is certainly a reason for this.  God has far bigger planned for us than we can even imagine.  

There are so many details though.  Outside of the big things, like the house, the small details seem so huge.

We are creatures of habit.  We've had the same eye doctors/doctors/chiropractor/vet for 15 years.  I've had the same counselor for 7 years.  We've been with the same cell/phone/internet/television provider or some version of it for 15 years.  I buy groceries at a combo of HyVee and Trader Joes.  All those things will have to change.  Some seem so trivial, but they all must change.

I know where everything is here.  I have a routine.  I know who to call depending on the problem I am having.  I know the list of people to contact when I have great news.  

I know the season changes and what to expect.  I know what channel has the most accurate weather forcast and where the best alerts are for bad weather.  I know what day the trash truck comes.  I know where the closest and cheapest gas is located.  I don't have to travel out of town for anything.  

The area we are moving to doesn't have anything comparable.  I've never been there.  I don't know anything.  I know nobody.

Realistically, we will have to drive an hour to get to anything.  I know I will be ok, but what a change we are facing.  

It's so hard for me to take it all in right now.  

A few months ago, I had an anxiety filled breakdown.  Why?  There was nothing wrong.  That was the problem.  Things were about as good as they had ever been.  I was anxious because I was waiting for the world to fall apart.  I was anxious because my natural bent is to not live a life where things stay stable for long.  Well, this isn't the end of the world, but this definitely rocks that stability quite a bit.

I know I will be ok, but I don't know how.  I must keep reminding myself to hang on tight cause this new adventure is happening regardless of what I want or think. 

Tummy Trouble

A couple weeks ago, I had my physical.  The first in probably 7 years with blood work and all.

I was scared.  Why wouldn't I be?

In addition, I had an ultrasound of my abdomen.

My ultrasound showed no stones and no enlargement of the organs.  Yay!  Sort of.  I started a new med for my stomach.  It is working for the most part.  I don't have the pain that I did.  If I miss a pill, I most certainly do have it.  So, I know there is something wrong.  It could be something as simple as an inflammation of my digestive system that will take time to heal.  Needless to say, I am still going through some meds and med changes with a hope of avoiding further and more invasive testing.

The really good news is that the results of my blood were all good or decent.  For someone who is overweight, I can't complain about the direction I am going.  My weight was down 31 lbs and my blood pressure was way down.  My cholesterols could both improve a little.  All other tests were within normal range and show no signs of infection or problems with any major organs.

All in all, I am happy with the results but will have to continue to stay on top of the stomach problems.