Tag: starting over

Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders,

Let me walk upon the waters,

Where ever you would call me,

Take me deeper then my feet would ever wander,

that my faith would be made stronger,

In the presence of my savior

My heart has sung this song so many times in the past few years, and my soul meant every word of it. Of course I admit I thought my journeys would be more of the metaphorical type. LOL! This is sort of a ‘Lord send me anywhere but Africa kind of story.” LOL!

So, I left you hanging at the end of January with us putting our house in Oregon up for sale. Our hearts had already made the move to Florida but our heads were still trying to catch up with the game.

This story begins on the third day of showing the house, after the third viewer made us a full price offer and we accepted it. It was so exciting. It was so terrifying. It was wonderful and horrible.

It is so strange how you can feel two seemingly opposite emotions at the same time. But you can! As I started to tell the people I love that we would be moving to Florida for sure I was so surprised by their responses. Our Kids were, of course, so supportive and happy for us. Though they were also very sad as were we. That didn’t really surprise me that much.

Turns out our kids were the easy ones to tell. It was harder to tell my grown grandkids. I figured my Eldest Grandson would be cool with it as he has moved away for work and has a lovely girl friend and is creating his own new life.

My Granddaughter is also grown and off to college and doing a great job of it, and I am so very proud of her! I have a special bond with all of my grandkids, but Em and I have grown even closer over the last few years as she has become a young woman. She loves to come and just hang out with me on stressful weekends when she can get away from school. We laugh together and sometimes cry together. We put puzzles together but our favorite thing is to play a card game called spit. I taught her to play this game years ago when I was at the top of my game, and I’m proud to say she has become the master and has dethroned my record. LOL! When I told her that we were moving, she and I cried together for a very long time.

The whole month of February my husband and I sorted, cleaned, fixed up, packed up, cleared out, laughed and cried. I looked forward to and dreaded every weekend at the same time. On the weekends all the kids and grandkids when they could make it down would come over and spend a couple days helping us with all that needed to be done. I made a declaration right away that I called the three foot rule. This rule states that if you come within three feet of me you need to stop and give me a big hug. I was great at first, all the hugs were amazing and came with giggles. I was on a mission and excited to get it done. Then at one point I was standing in my bedroom surrounded by all my girls and one of them said out loud ‘Three foot rule” and they all moved in to hug me. I just started the ugly cry right there and then. So of course my eldest Daughter had to get a photo. Photo included along with other three foot rule photos

Ya know sometimes in your life you wonder if you are doing what the Lord wants you to do. You struggle with making decisions and question the sanity of those decisions. I know I do. But this was not one of those times. God showed up and was evident in every step of this process.

Just a few of the ways God showed up :

• My husband lost his job/ retired making it possible for us to move, which we never would have decided to do because it wasn’t part of our precious retirement plan.

• We both started waking up earlier and earlier for a couple of weeks, not of our own doing, but it just happened. We woke early, worked all day going thru things and going to bed earlier because we were exhausted. So by February our bodies were already on Florida time, before we even moved.
• In September of last year we planned a vacation to visit our kids in Florida. We purchased our tickets for February 28th. The tickets were an outrageous price but my husband said to buy them anyway! Which he never does. He is a serious penny pincher. I remember asking him then, “what have you done with my husband!”
• Then the sale of our house in Oregon “just happened to” close on February 27th. We flew out the next day. God planned that months in advance for us.
• At the beginning of February we needed to book a PODS container to ship our belongings to Florida. At the time we had no idea where we would be moving to. We had looked at a few houses on line but we were planning on moving in with our daughter in law’s parents and then look for a place. We scheduled the PODS container to be dropped off (so we could load our stuff) on the 24th of Feb and pick it up on the 27th. Then it would travel across country and would arrive on the 11th of March. We had scheduled it to be delivered to our son’s house to serve as a storage unit until we found a place.
• Then a few weeks later our daughter in law sent us a link to a large house in Lakeland with an in-law suite attached. This was a house we could buy together with them. With Twins on the way they were fast out growing their home. This house was large enough to hold their growing family comfortably and give us our own side of the house. It was beautiful and Lindsay and I decided right away that this was the home for us. It was perfect for us to be close and be able to help out with the new babies and the three older boys. Well we put in a long shot offer and it was accepted over the rest. We closed on that house March 9th and guess what day we moved in? That’s right, the 11th. so on the 9th we changed the Pod’s delivery address to our new address and it showed up before all of our helpers.

This whole move has been filled with things like this. It has been amazing. God is so good! So you would think that I’m on cloud nine all the time. And I am much of the time. I know we are where God wants us. I’m happy to be near my Son’s family and grandkiddos. I love my new home. Yet I miss my Oregon family and friends so very much and my heart aches for them.

I’m a very small town girl who is very uncomfortable with change and now I live in a Big City and Everything in my life is new and different. New state, New house, New neighborhood, new neighbors, New house noises, new vehicle when we can find one we like, new surroundings, New stores, new weather, new church… and hopefully soon new friends! You name it, It’s new.

Since I’ve been here I’ve been warned not to touch any plant unless I know what it is, It might be poisonous. I’ve been warned about alligators, Pythons, fire ants, Some huge spider I forget the name of but we have killed one already, water moccasins, mosquitos, and something they call no-see-ums! But I’m not really worried, I will just never ever leave my house. LOL! Just kidding!

In Oregon all I had to worry about was black widow spiders, rattle snakes, bear and cougars. Oh and BIG FOOT of course. Apparently everything in Florida wants to kill you! Oh Florida has the bears and cougars too! SO I do feel more at home knowing that! LOL!

I guess I am telling you all this to let you know that it’s ok to feel all the feelings. God knew I would miss my Oregon kids, grandkids, nieces, nephews, friends, neighbors. And that they would miss me. That is how it should be, because we love each other big! But with every heartache of things I miss, there is joy in the people and things I have here.

I do often still ask myself “Why am I here?” I think it’s still my head trying to figure it all out because my soul always comes right back with “Because the Lord invited you!” It is well with my soul and I do so LOVE MY LIFE!