What. A. Year.
2012 has definitely been the year of change around here. For everyone I know.
The change all started in February with the birth of Titus. Our little boy! Going from one child to 2, honestly, was very hard on me. Seriously, I cried the first 2 months of his life. But you know what? God brought me through that. He gave me the victory and put joy back into my life!
March, Steven turned 25!
In April was another big change. Our pastor and his wife felt God wanted them to pastor a church in Alabama. All the way in Alabama! The people who taught us about Holiness and treated us like thier own children were moving 6 hours away! Seriously, how in the world could we carry on? But you know what? We did. God helped us. And He is continuing to help us. He is very patient :)
So, our best friends stepped up as pastor and Steven became the assistant pastor. Another huge change.
In April, I turned 25! I don't do well with birthdays. Don't get me wrong, I am very thankful God has blessed me with another year, but man! I'm getting old!
Also in April, the devil fought me with something that, looking back, was the most crazy, ignorant, stupidest (I know that's not a word but it fits) thing ever. Then, it looked huge. But now, I think, 'What was I thinking? Did I REALLY believe that?' But, God knew exactly what I was going through and facing and He brought me right on through. Praise God!
I think God let us rest from change in May. But, in June, Steven and I felt God wanting us to move closer to our church. Then, we lived 35 minutes away, which really isn't too far, but it was far enough away to hinder us from helping like we should.
Moving meant being 35 minutes from my Mommy and Daddy as opposed to 35 sceonds. That was hard on me. But, God brought me through that also!
So we started looking for houses in Danville. Steven wanted a house that was cheap (our house was paid off so he understandably wanted a low house payment). I, on the other hand, wanted a house with at least 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, an extra room for a play room, a craft room, an office for Steven, a laundry room, a walk-in pantry, oh! And it HAS to be close to Orange Leaf! Is that too much to ask?
Well, we found a house we thought was perfect! Only it didn't have any of the little details I wanted :) Except it was close to Orange Leaf! But by that time, I was convinced I couldn't get all those extra rooms for our budget. So we put in an offer and we thought for sure this was the house! Our offer got rejected. We put in another offer and it was rejected too and they accepted another person's offer.
I cried and thought we would never find another house as good! I tend to be on the dramatic side sometimes.
I believe we just about looked in every house in Danville that was for sale (and probably some that weren't) twice!
It would be years before we ever found a house! We would have to live in the multi-colored trailor park by Red Wing! (Those of you who have ever been to Danville, know where I'm talking about) Like I said, I tend to be a tad dramatic.
But, Steven was looking online and found a nice looking house that had been listed for a while but it had never showed up in our searches for some reason. So on our anniversary, we drove by it. We both loved it from the outside and wanted to look inside. We found an agent and looked in it and we loved it even more! We put in an offer. It was rejected. So were all the other offers we put in. We just stopped since they didn't want to budge on the price obviously and started looking for other houses.
We didn't find any we liked as good as that house but oh well. Then one morning at, like, 3 a.m., I woke up and decided to look at that house one more time on the app I had on my phone. The priced had just dropped dramatically! I was so excited! So we put in another offer (actually it was the same offer they had just rejected) and it was accepted!
On October 31st, we moved in! I thought moving would be fun and exciting. And it has been, but it has also been a very hard, nerve-racking, trying, emotional time. Lots of blood, sweat, & tears have gone into fixing this house up. But, God has helped us through every.single.bit of it. If He had not, I would probably be bald from pulling my hair out!
You see, at first, everything was going wrong. We had $250 of our flooring stolen, the drywall work turned out to be a mess and we had to redo it all, it seemed like all the building materials were more expensive than we thought, Steven's tools kept breaking, and so on...
But, there could have been a lot more gone wrong. The basement leaked (we knew this before we bought the house) and it ended up costing thousands of dollars less to fix than we thought, there was an electrical issue that was going to take days to fix plus it was going to cost $500 but it ended up taking 30 minutes and $150, Steven found another electrical problem that could have caught the house on fire if he had not found it, and just tonight, Steven was able to fix the shower upstairs. He had thought it would take around 5 hours (because he was going to have to take the entire tub out and put it back in) but he got to looking at it and found the problem to be a lot smaller than he thought and it took 15 minutes to fix!
God has been so good to us. You see, in 2012, the devil fought us harder than ever before. But, we relied on God more than ever before which means we are closer to Him. As long as I got King Jesus, I don't need nobody else!
Oh, and by the way, our new house has 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, a play room, a craft room, an office for Steven, a laundry room, and a walk-in pantry, 2 garages, and a shed. And its about double the size of the first house we put an offer in on. (Its about 10 minutes from Orange Leaf, but, only 2 1/2 minutes from Walmart!)
Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us,
Ephesians 3:20
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