Skip–Who Used to be Rich Last Sunday

Brian and I have spent countless hours over the last three weeks packing up, laying flooring, painting, touching up and cleaning our Mariners house.  Last night I mopped my way to the front door and said good-bye.

I’ll miss that house, but even more–I’ll miss our neighborhood and neighbors.  We were so safe and taken care of there.  Do you know that for the nine years we lived there, I don’t know that we ever used a key to get into our house?  That’s partly because we always went through the garage, but also because we so rarely locked our doors.  For years,  I have left my purse and keys in my unlocked van in the driveway.  Countless times, we have driven away from the house and unknowingly left our front door wide open–like all the way open–and I haven’t worried about it.  That’s cool.  The kids have essentially had a gated-off circular track on which to safely ride their bikes and a plethora of other wheeled apparatuses.   We’ve had neighbors call us before Halloween just to confirm that our kids would be trick-or-treating.  When Halloween fell on a Sunday, they gladly agreed to let the kids come a day early.  That’s cool, too.  We’ve had neighbors join us for Christmas Eve dinner and and others for Easter dinner.  And the Holmes have spoiled us rotten for nine years–with attention, with service, with ingredients we were missing at times, with treats, with friendship… We’ve just been so lucky.  I guess I’ve already talked about all this though….

The good thing is–there are little blessing wherever you live.  In the rental (we’ve had to call this house the rental to distinguish it from the Mariners house since we’ve been in and out of both for the last three weeks), we live across the street from the Glowacki’s and that has already been amazing.  They’ve already brought us banana-coconut muffins and entertained our kids for hours.  I’ve even been able to have Ava babysit already. Sooo nice.  We love them.  

And this house is nice, too.  It is not the new house that I have been decorating in my head for three years, but it is still a nice house.  It has a sunny playroom, people.  And storage.  Lots of storage.  Could it get any better?  Well, yes, it could.  But seriously–nothing says luxury to me like storage and a playroom.

So yeah, the new house….    Sigh…   We are so not close to starting it yet.  Did I tell you that we decided to draw the plans ourselves?  It seemed like such a good idea to Brian, but then he got too busy to work on them.  And there’s no telling when he’ll ever find the time..  I wish I could say this hasn’t been super hard for me, but i’ll be honest.  This has been super hard for me.  I’ve been looking forward to this ever since we bought our lot back in 2008, and the only thing keeping us from building on it has been the sale of our Mariners house.  

Here is our floor plan.  At least that part is mostly figured out.

And here is the basic front elevation.  I’m hoping the facade will be grey shingles, though.

Hey, you wanna know what?   Several months back, I was praying about how difficult and frustrating it is for me to have Brian be so averse to communication–specifically about serious, consequential-type matters.  As I’ve told you, verbal communication (or even written, really.  I’ll take what I can get.    As long as it includes words.  ) is like nutrients and air to me.  I need it to survive.   I just want so badly to be able to explain my feelings and worries and anxieties to Brian and just have him listen and work them out with me–without getting mad and shutting down.  But that never happens.  So I was telling Heavenly Father that in my prayers one day, and he said to me–I mean, I think he said to me–I mean, he didn’t really SAY anything to me.  I just got the feeling he was saying to me:  Just tell ME.  When you’re worried and anxious and frustrated about something, come tell ME, and I will forward that message to Brian.  It’s easier for him to listen to me.   What a good idea!  The problem is though, it is SO HARD to keep my mouth shut with Brian, relying on Heavenly Father to deliver the message.  I haven’t done it successfully yet.  Or I HADN’T been successful at it…until about 10 days ago. 

 I had become really, really worried and anxious about a particular business situation and I desperately wanted to bring up the issue with Brian.  I wanted to talk to him about it and come to an agreement.  But he wouldn’t have it.  Soooo, I closed my mouth and walked away.  And as I was leaving, the thought came back to me:  Tell me, instead.  So I called my mom.  I told her about the prompting I had received months earlier and about the current situation.  I asked her to pray with me that I’d be able to use self restraint like never before to keep my mouth shut on the matter and just trust that God would deliver the message.  A while later, she called me back to let me know she felt confident I was doing the right thing.  We agreed that we would pray together and I would not bring up the situation again with Brian.  Rather, I would trust Brian to make the decision and hope that Heavenly Father would guide him.  And guess what??  I’m doing it!  I haven’t brought it up since, and I’m having faith!  Yay!  There is hope for me, after all!  Oh, man.  I’m so proud of myself.    (Then again, magic things do always happen when I have my mom praying about something with me.  I’ve told you about the power of her prayers, right?  If you have something you need prayers for, call her.  On second thought, she might be too booked with my problems.  You may want to try next month.)   The thing is–even if Brian makes a decision I don’t  agree with, my prayers will not have been for not (can I even say that?), because I will have still succeeded at using self control and supporting Brian.  So anyway…

Aaannndd, for the second time EVER, I resisted bringing up to Brian ANOTHER thing I became stressed and worried about.  I just went to my room and prayed all the things I wanted Brian to consider and then I paced around the house for a while giving myself motivational pep talks.  And I got through it!   (I know what you’re thinking.  You’re thinking Man, I can understand why Brian wouldn’t want to talk to you about anything.  You’re psycho!  I could be.  I could be. 

Yeah, so Brian and I have pretty much been fighting off and on for a few months now.  But it will be all right.  We’ll get through it.

Other than that.  The kids are doing well–sassy, man, I’ll tell ya!–but well.  We’ve had a wonderful summer so far.  Our trip through Utah and Vegas was wonderful.  It was relaxing and fun.  Fun because I was with my family and I was relaxed.  🙂  I’m so grateful for my family.