Time stops for no one. Occasionally, though, it seems to slow way down.  But only when we need it to speed up, right? 

May 26th forever changed our life.  The SCAD attack I went through has altered the way I view life, my circumstances, and death.  And for a month or so afterward, I wasn’t sure how to proceed.  Do I keep moving, working, cleaning, or do I stop everything and WAIT?  For what?  To die?  To feel better?  Oh my gosh!  It’s been an interesting journey.

The ‘plan’ was to have the house on the market by June.  Then, that got pushed back to July 1st.  Slowly, and steadily, with much caution, we moved forward and were finally ready by the fifth of July to get the ball moving.  That meant hauling the dog, the cat, and occasionally, the tortoise away from the house as we had people traipsing through in their own search for a new house.

WE HAD A BUYER!  And we were beyond excited for the price they wanted to pay for it.

Less than three days later, they pulled out.  Okay. We were told that wasn’t uncommon.  So, the second offer was accepted and we proceeded for over two weeks waiting for their inspection.  We got a call:  THEY PULLED OUT.

Now we were beginning to wonder what was wrong with our home.  I knew there were things I DIDN’T LIKE and thought may need attention but we had to go back to the drawing board and figure out what to do.  SO WE GOT OUR OWN INSPECTION!  We even took the money the buyers lost by pulling out and used it~it wasn’t enough but NO BIG DEAL!  We never did hear the reason why the buyers pulled out.  We figure it had to do with an old house, etc., and they just didn’t want the hassle of it all because the inspection showed nothing major to repair.  WHEW!

 

By now, it’s almost August and we have given away furniture, thinking we were going to buy an RV because we did NOT want to buy a home with the insanity of the market.  I had done some research about what we wanted, where we would put it and so keeping a lot of furniture was silly.  Most everything else was packed up and stored in closets and the storage room.

Our heart and prayers have been to live in the country, near our daughter and her family because we love it out there.  But we had a giant hurdle.  Jef worked in Boerne and that drive was going to be an hour and a half ONE WAY!

Huge hurdle.  More things to pray through.

 

In the meantime, a side issue, small as it was at the time turned into a huge blessing, because our daughter’s dog needed to be rehomed and she was scrambling to find a place by the end of July.  With a few days to go, the house across the street from her had been empty since they moved in and the owner happened to be there that day.  So she walked over, intending to ask if she could keep her dog there and he was very kind and said, “SURE.”  She went a step further and asked him if he was ever going to rent the house.  He informed her that he had inherited it and because of three back surgeries, he was unable to do the work it needed and couldn’t rent it until some things got fixed.  WELL, our amazing daughter told the man, “My dad is a carpenter and he can do anything. They’re selling their home so maybe they could help you.”  The man suggested we do a barter:  we live there, rent-free, and do the work the house needs.  We contacted him and set up a time to come see the place.

Now, I’d seen this place on the outside for over a year and Rachael sent us photos of the inside on the day she met with him, so I had some idea of the work, BUT I tell you what…it’s been A LOT OF WORK.

Within a few days, we met and discussed him selling it to us.  NOT GONNA happen.  Too many memories of growing up here every summer.  It was his grandparent’s home and he loves the place. That was very sad to me, especially since it’s sitting on 5.54 acres of land, fenced and unfenced with dense woods as well.

Yet, here’s what is super cool:  We can do whatever we want here, bar cutting down hundred-year-old live Oak trees!  He does not care if we do a garden, have animals, or cut down the brush and make a trail in the woods (which my son-in-law has already begun…they bought a dune buggy type thing just for that purpose!)

So, on August 14th, we, with the help of all our kiddos and their spouses, loaded a ‘too small of a truck” TWICE on the hottest day of the year, I believe, and moved us to our new home.  It was beyond scary because no one had lived in it for any length of time in over two years!  The dead bugs, grimy, paint-splattered floors, industrial ceiling tiles spray-painted with Kilz, and the sinking bathroom floors were evidence that we had perhaps gotten in WAY OVER OUR HEADS. I wonder if our kids thought we had gone off the deep end.  It appeared that we had:  no buyer for our home, moved to Seguin, and now to tell you how we were able to do all that.

Jef quit his job!  Not because he wanted to so we could move.  NOT at all.  He loved his job.  Well, love may be too strong a word.  He enjoyed his job but recently, the management had made statements regarding the ‘science’ of covid that were beginning to sound like Jef would have to wear his mask in an empty building and outside (where the SCIENCE shows that the sun kills the virus and the wind blows it away).  It came down to a confrontation and with respect to his boss, he told him he disagreed and wasn’t going to wear the mask.  At that, the boss told him he would have to leave and come back when covid was over. Jef said he was planning on putting in his two weeks’ notice.  It was a slightly intense conversation but the boss walked away and came back to say, “Just go home and I will pay you for your two weeks.”  Not only was the favor of God on him, but his boss also paid him for the sick time he’d accumulated.  Glory to God!

 

Hurdle crossed!  There wasn’t anything keeping us in San Antonio so we decided it was the right time to make the move.  Don’t get me wrong, leaving our four sons and the grand kiddos was a very tough thing to do.  Not having our son and his family drop by on their bikes has been so hard and not taking Isaac to work just so I can see him has been extremely sad to me.  Not having Caleb show up randomly for food makes me miss him even more.  We are seeing Daniel and Emily more now than we ever have because they are redoing their own home and so we go there to help paint.  I’m not going to let this move keep us from being close with our sons.

So, two days after we moved out, we went back again to clean up the house one last time and put it back on the market.  Six hours of washing and waxing hardwood floors, scrubbing three bathrooms by myself and making the front of the house presentable.  Jef had more little repairs to do and we still had things we couldn’t fit in the truck so we piled all we could get in and on the SUV!

We have made over four trips back and forth with more things we couldn’t fit in the truck and on September 14th, one month to the day, we made the last trip here with the last of our things.

The house had a buyer by August 18th and we were thrilled because the buyer wanted to ‘push through’ and closeby September 10th!  FANTASTIC, except that hasn’t happened…yet.

Back when I was praying about selling our home in June, I heard “You’ll close in October” and I immediately dismissed it, thinking that was me. I continue to be blown away when I think about the truth that I DO HEAR GOD’S VOICE.  But here we are, September 29th and our realtor called yesterday to say the buyer’s realtor or title company (not sure who’s job that is…) has an appraiser who will go to our home on Friday, hopefully, to do his job!  And that should be especially easy because our dear realtor friend has done all the leg and paperwork to make his job easier.  There need to be more appraisers in the world or even just San Antonio.  It’s also an issue of our home not being brand new but the buyer is paying an additional $600 to ‘speed’ the process up…ha!

Friday is October 1st!  Here’s believing we close by next week!

Let me say…

First of all, I wouldn’t have gotten all that needed to be done without the help of others.  I have a sweet friend, Karla, who has come over so many times to help me clean!!!  Thank you from the bottom of my heart, Karla.  She’s brought donuts, Tortilla soup, given me housewarming gifts, her honey helped Jef and Peter put up the chicken coop so our hens didn’t have to sleep in the dog crate inside the hot tub patio porch at night anymore!  THANK YOU, GUYS!  Our grands and daughter, Karla and her girls helped scrape disgusting tile off the bedroom floor where the elderly woman must have kept her St. Bernards (smelled like urine!)  Just imagine an elderly woman who can’t see the dirt to clean it and even if she could see it, couldn’t get down to scrub it the way it needed to be done. And multiply that by years of living alone.

Secondly, after about a week of constant cleaning just to feel like I could live here, I began wondering, “WHAT HAVE WE DONE?”  It felt like we were working from morning to night and not just doing simple things.  We had pipes come apart, water flooding the crawl space below the laundry room, septic pipes come apart, and water line leaks.  My Love was constantly working on something major.  There were nagging thoughts constantly bombarding my brain that we’d made a mistake or that we jumped the gun.

But God~if there’s one sure thing I know about Him it’s that His love is unconditional and He brings peace to a troubled mind.  Isaiah 26:3

I must share Jef’s ‘fun’ project. He totally transformed the old cistern building into his new shop.  He tore down a wall in this small building, enlarged the door, cleaned up all the insulation, some of it still on the walls but most on the floor and he did it when the temps were in the high 90’s with a hazmat suit on!  I did a lot of praying for him and his heart for a few days!!! Today, that shop is so efficient and useful, I am blown away.

The more I think about the move, the more I realize we took a giant step of faith, believing God had opened this door to a rent-free home on land, across the street from our daughter and her family, with no stress because the closing date doesn’t really affect us like it would if we were still back on McNeel.

Financially, it’s been okay.  We sold my van last week and I’m grateful that’s over!  We have had help from our daughter and she’s even had us pick up grocery orders she’s made for us.  Amazing.

So then, why the title?  Obviously, we live our lives in the daily routines of eating, sleeping, and doing what we set our hands to do.  But, for us, this year has been remarkably different and up until today, I couldn’t even sit long enough to write about it.  Now that things are settling in, it’s time to get back to the ‘mundane’.

But mundane is never mundane.

Ever.

 

 

 

Beginning in January, took steps to sell our home, made a decision to leave a church (a sad story), got hit with SCAD, watched the world get more fearful and react to lies, boxed up our belongings, gave away a ton of stuff, made more decisions to step out in faith, found a new church community of people who aren’t afraid of a virus, packed a truck and moved fifty miles east and have made decision after decision to put our hands to the plow, literally and figuratively, to work hard.  We’ve celebrated about half a dozen birthdays, are preparing to be grandparents again (Daniel and Emily’s first AND IT’S A GIRL),

baseball and football are in full swing, I crocheted a bunch of washcloth and pot holders for the baby shower, unpacked box after box, emptied the storage unit, planted a garden my love built for me, worked on the ‘bathtub’ pond, visited the fish at the old house and cried about leaving behind all the years of work I did there.

Forgive me if I’ve been kind of scattered in this post.  So much has happened this year.  As I write, I’m also processing it.

And hang on, because the best is yet to come.

I just know it.