Taking a Big Step

Most people know we are buying a house but I haven't said a whole lot about the house we are buying for fear that it would fall through. I haven't let myself get all excited either, ok so that is a lie, I have let myself get excited but only in my mind. I basically fall asleep thinking about color schemes, paint and decorations. :)

I've never lived in a house where I could paint the walls any color I wanted . We never owned our own home growing up. We moved a lot. I can count at least 9 houses I lived in from birth to age 16. And in my adult life, I've lived in about 5 different homes. Since having children, it's been my heart's desire to buy a home so that my children could grow up and create memories in one home, go to one school and grow up with the same group of friends. It's not really a desire that I have voiced, it's always been in my heart but in reality I knew that it would be a few mores years until we were able to buy a home of our own.

So imagine my surprise when I woke up one Saturday morning and see my husband sitting at the computer looking at homes. I'm about to ask him what he is doing and he says "Baby, I think we need to buy a house." Now my husband is not one to make rash decisions. He's a thinker, he's the logical rational one and out of the blue he says he thinks we should buy a house. My reaction was "Could you at least let me wake up first." We have always had plans to buy a home. It's just that those plans were in the future, like in five years from now. Definitely not until I had went back to work.

So I humored him and went along with the whole buying a house thing but honestly did not think that everything would work out to where we would be buying a home right now. I basically told God that if this was His will for us right now then everything would work out and if not then I would just know that it was not the right time. I basically thought it was simply that easy. If it's God's will then it will all go smoothly and if not then I will know it's Gods will that we not do it right now. God could have made it that simple, and sometimes he does. And other times He chooses to take you down the other path. The one that can get pretty bumpy at times. The one where it seems everyday it's another hurdle you have to jump over. The path that makes you turn more to Him. I can't really say why God does this for some people but I can say why He has for me. I know it's because He wants me to trust Him completely with the future of my family. He is trying to teach me that I can't rely on anyone or anything but Him. I can either choose to trust Him, that this is His will and He will provide for my family or I can spend my days worrying and driving myself and my husband crazy.

The truth is He always makes a way. Whether it's financially or another area of my life. Things have been tight financially for our family the last few years but as I look back at every time that I wasn't sure how we were going to make ends meet there is not one single time that God did not come through. And though there were many times I worried and fretted about it there is not one time that my children went hungry or did not have the clothes they needed.

We are doing a lot better financially than ever but lately I have been worrying just as much as I ever have. And I have finally realized that it is a trust issue between me and God. I say I trust Him to take care of my family but I'm not sure I have really been trusting Him lately. I want to be in control and when I feel like I'm losing control I start getting a little crazy. It's not just been about buying a house, it's so much more than that. It just took going through the process of buying the house to show me that I don't truly trust God the way I say I do or the way I want to.

Ruben had an echo gram done this week, his pediatrician discovered a heart murmur while he was doing Ruben's physical this week. He was pretty sure it is no big deal but wanted to be sure. Well, my mind started going through all the scenarios of what could happen. I started having a lot of anxiety over the whole thing and I heard God whisper to me "You either trust Me to take care of him or you don't." It's the same thing He whispered to me last year when Marissa had her surgery.

I've heard that same whisper from God a lot lately. Ruben will be going to preschool this year and I am terrified. It's not just him growing up and me missing him during the day. I have such a fear of one of my children being sexually abused. I know all parents fear this but that fear has been what has really kept me from ever returning to work after Ruben was born. I never saw myself as a stay at home mom, never really wanted to be. But after he was born there is just no way I could trust someone else to take care of him. I know this is because of what I went through as a child and the things I saw when I was a social worker. I have been having full blown panic attacks lately that I haven't had in years just thinking about trusting others to care for him. That has been when God has whispered so gently "You gave him back to me when he was born, you have entrusted him to me, you either trust me to take care of him or you don't." I know trusting God to take care of him does not mean nothing bad will ever happen, it just means that God is ultimately in control and will get us through what ever we have to face.

I'm still learning, learning to trust God, others and myself. I'm still learning not to worry about things so much and just enjoy every moment of life.

This is certainly not where I thought I was going with this when I started this post. But I guess it's where I needed to go. I'm not going to let myself go back and reread it because I know that I will take a lot I have said out. It's been from my heart and I need to let myself write more from there and not censor myself so much.