Challenges and Blessings

As with all of life, our house project has surprised us with many unexpected challenges and road blocks. However, thus far, I'm feeling incredibly thankful for the ways in which they've resolved themselves. We have been so blessed by NOT having a major insect repair job on our hands, by NOT having to deal with some costly code things we were told we would have to deal with, by NOT having to pay as much as we were anticipating for converting our power from overhead to underground, and by NOT having to wait a long time for permits. We were told it would be about 3 weeks of waiting, but as of last Thursday, we have our permits in hand and are able to go forward with the framing in of new walls and the destruction of walls we're removing. The entire upstairs is framed in with the new floorplan in place and the downstairs is partially framed in. The project hasn't quite kept Jeremy's schedule, but he's a very optimistic scheduler and we're nearly on track with his lofty goals (which I think is amazing!). We've been blessed with lots of help from friends and are very grateful for it. All of these blessings aren't things that we NEEDED or even necessarily EXPECTED to have happen, so we are very grateful.

We need to remember this gratefulness and the ways things have been going well as we face our newest sets of challenges. We don't expect or "demand" that things will continue to go as well as they have been, but we ought not get sidetracked and "down" because of other unexpected challenges that pop up. At this moment, those challenges include the surprising fact that most of the grain on the Columbia River has already been sold, so the upriver trips we've been counting on to sustain our income while allowing Jeremy the flexibility to work on the house are no longer available. Our other unexpected challenge has to do with a county road being built right through our backyard in the next 5-15 years. Because the house was a foreclosure, we waived our rights to disclosures about the property, and we obviously didn't do our homework as well as we thought we had. We don't know when this road project will begin to truly affect us, because it doesn't yet have funding, but it will eventually change the entire landscape of our backyard (and the location of our newly placed sewer system pumps). We obviously can't do anything about it at the moment except be aware that it will come at some point in time, but it makes it harder to embrace this project. Jeremy has put it SO many hours and SO much labor (and will put in so much more before all is said and done), and we've really customized the floorplans to our family. It's hard to think about this place as "just a flip" when there has been so much personal investment. I would love to not move our kids during their school years, and I was hoping this would be the place where we'd stay until all the kids completed high school. Knowing there will be a road roaring through what used to be our backyard makes the location a lot less appealing in the long term. As with everything else in our lives, we ought to hold this house with an open hand. In some ways, knowing about this road makes it easier for me to hold it loosely, but it is more like a painful forcing open of my clenched fist than I'd like it to be. :-) I want to be thankful at this moment for the reminder to hold this dream, and all my selfish dreams, more loosely than I am accustomed. In the grand scheme of life, my children's security ought not come from living in one house during the whole of their school years - it ought to come from their position as children loved by Christ and loved by their family.

Anyway, I can tell I'm beginning to ramble (if I haven't already been rambling for a while), so I'm gonna sign off for now.

BTW, anyone keeping up with the lenten challenge? We are trying to keep it up and I'm really enjoying our evening conversations about how we were loving and how we failed to be loving during the course of the day, and most of all, how we're going to change for the better tomorrow. We're trying to be careful not to get too focused on self-help, but rather, to be mindful of the grace of God at work within us as we are intentional about allowing Him to influence our actions and attitudes. Tricky concepts for 3- and 5-year-olds...and 27-year-olds. :-)