How Is It Going?

This phase of our journey is hard in some ways and easy in others. We love our surroundings and apartment complex. The area is beautiful and very developed so we have many things available to us from stores to restaurants to parks. This area is very family oriented. Every time we turn a corner when we are driving we find a community center of some sort. The parks are beautiful and large and there are running trails and bike trails everywhere. There is a Wal-Mart right across the street from our apartment so if I ever need something during the day, the girls and I can walk there. The swimming pool is heated and I am in love with the layout of the apartment....large kitchen, washer/dryer, bedrooms on separate side of the apartment and large bathtub so I can finally take a bath and read my novel.

That was all the good stuff, but there are some daily struggles that I encounter. Mainly lack of a social life, which is tough for me. I miss seeing people that I know. Moving to a new place involves patience with developing relationships. It is just now starting to develop. I finally made connections with the MOPS group and have a play date set up this week. It will be so good to chat with another mommy. The people at the apartment complex are not very social and the culture is quite diverse. It has been a while since I have felt connected to people. When we lived in Stockton I had a month there of not knowing anyone either. So it has been a couple months of feeling solitude with my connections during the day. Dan and I find that on Sundays we both experience increased anxiety. He feels it because of going to work on Monday (the job is doable but has long hours and is not something he loves) and I feel it because I know that I have to go five days without having Dan home and not seeing anyone I know during the day. Needless to say, we really miss the comforts of home. We are surviving, but feel some strain here as we wait for the last couple months to go by.

One of the hardest things has been accepting our financial situation for what it is. We can't put very much extra on the mortgage so we will be set back with paying off the debt. So many days I just keep asking Why? I want to know why we were put here and why our financial goal has been delayed. It is frustrating and makes us feel defeated in some ways. It feels like a dead end to me because I got in such a routine of writing those weekly checks to the bank. Now I can't do that. I even remember asking Dan when we first moved here, "Did we miss God's plan for us?" "Did we move to the wrong the location or sign the wrong job contract?" But....thankfully I was reminded from God's word and a daily devotional that dead ends are part of God's plan. Even if it is simply to build our faith and trust in what God can and will do for us. The devotional reminded me to expect God to act so our faith can be stretched. The verse below sums it all up for me.

"At that time we were completely overwhelmed, the burden was more than we could bear, in fact we told ourselves that this was the end. Yet we believe now that we had this experience of coming to the end of our tether that we might learn to trust, not in ourselves, but in God who can raise the dead." (2 Corinthians 1:8b-9 PH)