This December will mark two years that Don has been out of the Army. It has been a humbling and life changing experience. We went from feeling like Don had a career and even though we were never rich, we always felt like we had enough to feed our family and take care of the needs that we had. When he got out, we lost our income, our home, our insurance, therapy for our son Daniel who has Autism. Our plan was to stay in for 20 years and get retirement and insurance for life, but the Army said Don had to get out and so our first major door closed and we were redirected to take another path.
After looking for jobs and homes in Texas we kept having one door after another close on us and so we prayed to know God's will and we received inspiration that we needed to leave Texas and move to Washington State. With heavy hearts we said our goodbyes, packed up our moving truck, and made it out of Texas the day before the state ran out of Gas because of the hurricane Harvey. We made it through the I-84 road that leads to WA the day before that road was closed to wild fires. I felt like God had held open the doors in both states just long enough for us to pass through.
We just hit our 1 year mark of living here in Washington in Don's parents house. There have been good things about it, but it has been very hard as a family of seven trying to live at someone else's house. It puts a strain on relationships and fosters an uncertain and unstable environment for my children who thrive on consistency and stability. I am grateful that they have let us stay here because honestly we would be homeless if they had not, but that doesn't mean it has been easy. Don applied for many jobs and got one for about 3 months before he was let go from that job. We made the decision that he needed to go back to college and he has been taking general college classes because he hadn't yet decided what degree/career he really wanted to pursue. For about 3 months we have been trying to find a piece of property to build on because the market in Western WA is crazy expensive right now and we haven't been able to find a place that we could afford. This summer we finally found a piece of property, put an offer on it, the offer was accepted. We found a manufactured home that we could afford that was big enough for our family that we were going to put on the property and everything was set to go. When the loan was days from being closed we got a call that said the city contacted the construction person who was going to start prepping the land and said sorry, even though we told you it was ok to put a manufactured home on this property, its not. It felt like someone slammed on the brakes while we were going 60 miles an hour. SCREECH!!! We had prayed that if it wasn't right, it wouldn't work out. The answer was that it was definitely not right.
We found out last week why it wasn't right for us to buy a house here. Don finally decided on a degree/career path and just got accepted into an x-ray tech program in Spokane, WA. It is about 6 hours from where we live now on the opposite side of the state. There were no x-ray tech programs close by where we live. As we started looking at houses over there, we discovered that we could find so much more house for our money. We found a house that will work well for our family and are planning to make an offer today. Don starts school on Oct. 1st - This upcoming Monday! He will have to move there without us at first, but I am just happy that he has found something he wants to do and that a window is opening for us to have our own home again and move forward in our life. Once the house is ours Don will move in and the kids and I will join him probably around Christmas time. We have specialist apts here that we have waited a long time for and therapy for our son Daniel that we want to continue for as long as possible.
Lessons learned from these last two years. God allows us to dead end so that we can be certain that the path we were on was not the path that was best. At first I felt discouraged when it felt like we kept hitting one dead end after another or by having one door close after another, but now I have hope. I can see that by one experience at a time, God is leading me in a direction that will be better for my life and for the life of my family. I can see His hand in our lives. I feel reassured and trust in Him. Here we go on our new journey.
