House sold....emotions unraveling cont'd

Alright, so I left off with saying yes to a move to Texas. About that time, both of our brothers got engaged and set their wedding dates 2 weeks apart, one before Christmas and one after Christmas. And I was honored to be asked to be in both weddings. Which is normally something I love. LOVE LOVE LOVE. I normally throw myself 100% into it. Except this time I was still getting over my dog bite which I felt ridiculous for still having to deal with, the holidays were fast approaching, and I had the Texas move looming ever present in my mind.

From October to well, March, actually, I was exhausted. I felt like I was continually playing catch up and never had a chance to recharge to fully be myself. I felt like I constantly let down everyone in my life that I loved the most. The wedding festivities started in October with bridal showers quickly proceeded into one holiday after another peppered with more bridal showers in between. The introvert in me was sucked dry and I had nothing to give. I couldn’t be the person that I wanted to me. I couldn’t love and serve them like I knew I should, like I wanted to. I was barely keeping my head above water as life kept on rushing by.

And then all of a sudden – WOOSH- the holidays were over, our brothers were married and I had somehow managed to volunteer to work full time at Kevin’s office for the month leading up to our move with only a week off before we were to be fully packed up and our house ready to be on the market and our butts on the road to Texas.

What was I thinking?!

Oh, wait…I know what I was thinking. It was a combination of I can’t say “no” and “hmmmm…that extra money would be great to buy some cute stuff for my new house”. And even though it upped my stress level astronomically, I would say that working at Kevin’s office for that month was a truly great experience. I feel I’ve been able to be a bigger support to Kevin now that I understand his company better and what his job is in a way that I wouldn’t have without working there.

However, that last month was so hard. I was completely empty and had been for months. I still barely remember it which is horrible since one of my close friends had her first baby a few weeks before we left. I still feel sad when I think about how much I wasn’t there for her. The amount of regret that I have over that time period is pretty overwhelming.

It is all of these thoughts and emotions from the past 2 years that came rushing through my mind and slammed into my thoughts as I was signing those real estate documents. So much regret. So many unfulfilled hopes and dreams. So many people I feel I let down and didn’t fully engage. When I bring up the images of my house my heart is so heavy with what could have been but wasn’t.

And so I cried. And cried. And cried some more. Poor Kevin had no idea what was going on. To him selling the house was a wonderful blessing. He felt an immense burden being lifted from his shoulders. He wanted me to stop crying and be happy. But I couldn’t be happy. I needed to be sad. I needed to mourn and get it all out of my system. After a few minutes, he understood that he didn’t need to fix me. He just needed to let me cry it out. He wasn’t used to this much emotion from me. Somewhere over the past 2 years, specifically the last 8 months, I had shut down my heart. I had stopped feeling much at all. I mean, I felt emotion on the surface but not real deep true emotion. So to feel, to truly feel all of the pain and disappointment…OUCH….it hurt. But at least I was feeling again. And that was a good thing.

That is why I didn’t write for a week. I didn’t want to write because all of this was swimming around in my brain. Well, there was some other stuff too...like the battle I was waging with an army of ants that had decided to invade my house but that is whole other post (with pictures!).

I am at a good(ish) place now. God and I are working on some stuff and it’s hard. It’s refining. But I am feeling again. Joy. Peace. Pain. Sorrow. Frustration. It’s a little overwhelming, actually. It’s ok though because this is where God wants me. He’s teaching me to be ok with being vulnerable. He's showing me that I am not supposed to rein in my emotions “just in case”. He's revealing that I am supposed to love even if I’m not loved in return.

Basically, I am to be vulnerable and transparent and trust Him for the outcome.

….Shudder…..

How scary is that?! UM. Very! However, He’s bigger than what scares me and He’s promised me big things in return.

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” John 10:10

House sold...emotions unraveling cont'd

So here is the continuation of the rollercoaster of my past two years. Here’s the deal though…yesterday I spent about 2 hours perfecting what I had to say. It was 3 pages long. But for some reason after I cut the part that I wanted to use for yesterday’s post I didn’t save the rest of it. I don’t want to try to recreate what I wrote yesterday because once it’s out of my brain it’s pretty much gone for good.

Here’s the first part of the thrown together version.

To sum up…Kevin and I bought a house, 3 weeks later we brought home a beautiful black fuzz ball of stress named Lucy.

After a while we got in a groove with Lu and life was chugging along nicely. I was at a job that I hated but I loved the people so that made it ok. Kevin and I were working towards goals and once those goals were met I would be able to quit working and go back to school. But then all of that came to a screeching halt when we were presented with an opportunity that seemed to good to pass up.

The really short version of that is that I had a chance to open a consignment clothing boutique in a fantastic location in Downtown Boise for $500 a month. So after much prayer we felt like “what the heck, let’s do it!" In fact I had a really great peace about it. That is until it all fell apart about a month away from opening. The landlady was ooooolllllldddd and hadn’t kept up with building codes and the city would have made her do around $75,000 in retrofitting for us to be able to open. For some reason, she didn’t think that spending that amount of money for $500 a month seemed like a good idea. I don’t know why.

It was weird though because even after everything blew up, I still felt at peace with our decision to follow it through as far as we did. But what to do next? My heart had already made the switch from legal assistant to boutique owner. The idea of going to back to my legal assistant job (which my wonderful attorney said I could) made me want to cry. I couldn’t do it. So I left a job where everyone felt like family to figure out what I wanted to do when I grew up.

While I was doing my figuring, my MIL said I could work for her at her consignment store. It was a great opportunity to do something different and as I left my job on the last Friday of last June, I was filled with such excitement and joy for the future. I had no idea what was on the horizon but I was really excited to find out.

Then 5 days later I was bit by a dog. Literally an ankle biter. There was blood, tears, stitches and several rounds of antibiotics. I had nerve damage, a cankle for 4 months and more pain that I had experienced from something that wasn’t menstrual cramps. I couldn’t walk…I could only hobble feebly. The antibiotics made me sick.

I was sidelined from life. It messed with my head. All of the plans and dreams that I’d had for the summer went quickly down the drain. I went into a pretty big funk and couldn’t get out of it since all the things I normally do to get out of it weren’t options (exercise, cleaning etc) since I couldn’t be physical. The only food that didn’t make me want to throw up were comfort foods so I gained 5 pounds. It was a very frustrating, French fry filled time in my life.
Then about a month into the whole dog bit fiasco, Kevin called me out of the blue when he was on a business trip and asked me if I was open to moving to Texas. I did some research and called him back and said sure, why not! So that got the ball rolling for our move here.

Tomorrow I’ll fill you in on the rest.