When we found out that the house was no longer available-after months and months of planning, preparing, working, cleaning-we were pretty devastated. How would we make our new situation work? Where would we live? Would I be able to continue to stay home?
When I quit my job last December to move to Florida with Ted, I had mixed emotions. I was super, super, super excited to get to stay home with Hannah but sad to be leaving such a great job. It was a really, really great job. Flexible hours, home by early afternoon, doing what I loved with people I loved being with. And I actually got paid pretty dang good for only working nine months of the year. Hannah was safe at home with Ted and all was good. I knew the possibility of finding a job like that again in this lifetime were slim to none. It was hard to walk away-but I was excited for what I was walking into.
After the moldy, homeless summer-it just didn't seem like things were going to fall in place.
But if I learned anything from being "homeless" for 10 weeks, I learned that God provides. We always had a place to stay-always. Sometimes we didn't know where we would live at the end of the week, but we would get a text from a friend offering their place for the exact day that we had to move out of our current one. God's hand was in it the entire time.
So on the very same day that we found out the house was no longer available for us to live in, it didn't even surprise me that I got a potential job offer for a job I didn't even apply for. I took an at-home job as the nursery coordinator at our new parish. It just fell in my lap! Not even a week later, I got a call from a friend asking if I would consider becoming her son's speech therapist. She offered to watch Hannah while I worked with him so I wouldn't have to find childcare. It really couldn't have been more perfect or come at a better time.
The blessings have been tremendous. I spend a decent amount of time working on nursery stuff in the evenings, but the money I get from it is keeping us afloat. And combined with the income I'll be making from working with just one client-I'm actually making about the same amount of money each month that we would have saved if we had lived in the free house!
All of my fears about Hannah have been quelled-she LOVES spending time with my friend and her other children while I go to "work" just two half-hours a week. It gives her a built in play date in a loving, fun, holy home twice a week-something I had really been seeking out for her after our attempt at a Mother's Morning Out ended horribly. My friend gets discounted therapy for her son. I get to work with preschoolers again and do some of the things I love-like write reports! Blessings all around.
So we don't have free rent-we write a monthly check just like everyone else. And with the promise of free rent being dangled in front of us for so long, it still hurts a little. But the jobs I've been given-jobs that allow me to stay home with my girl and be a speech therapist-are an unforeseen blessing that's more than we ever expected.
The words of our wedding gospel echo in my mind all the time. “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? (Matthew 6:25-27)
We have no reason to worry. God has provided for us every step of the way, even if He sometimes makes us wait a few months to see the answer. We are so grateful. So blessed.
