“Trust in the Lord with all your heart
And lean not on your own understanding;
In all your ways submit to him,
And he will make your paths straight.”
Proverbs 3:5-6

Welcome April. It has been one month since we moved into our new home, and almost every alarm bell has gone off. Literally, not figuratively. 

Early in the evening on the first day of moving, my husband called me on his last trip to the house. He was driving on the highway and he said that something was seriously wrong with his truck. His dashboard was lit up and his truck kept dying. He said that I was probably going to have to bring the kids and rescue him. It turns out that he blew the engine pulling too heavy of a load. Thankfully, he did end up making it to the house. After he unloaded everything, we went and picked him up late that night.

On the second night in our home, we woke up to a “beep beep beep beep.” Our fire alarm was going off in the hallway between our bedrooms. Geoffrey jumped out of bed and ran downstairs to get the step stool. He determined that it was just a faulty battery, and went to remove it from the ceiling. Suddenly we hear “fire! fire!” coming from the alarm. Geoff took it down and shut it off, but both of us were rattled. We have woken up in the middle of the night to a house fire in the past, and it had brought back those memories for me. I didn’t sleep for the rest the night.

We were scheduled to get our water delivered the next day. The truck came that afternoon as I was putting the kids down for a nap. Geoffrey went down into the basement to keep an eye on our water tank as it was getting filled. All of a sudden, I hear “BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP.” It went on and on for a few minutes until it finally stopped. Apparently, the delivery guy couldn’t tell when to stop filling the tank, and it nearly overflowed. Geoff had to grab the stool once again and unplug the alarm on the ceiling in order to silence it. At that point, I had hoped that we heard the last of alarms going off. I was wrong.

We hired a plumber to come out and take a look at our furnace and water on demand system. He showed up the following day. The furnace was making a loud squealing noise to which the plumber ended up fixing. However, he had no idea how to get our in floor heating or our hot water to turn on. He ended up leaving without solving the problem. Fast-forward to the end of the day, I had tracked down the serviceman who had originally installed everything. It turns out that our water on demand system was corroded and discontinued. So we went without hot water and heat in the basement until the end of the week when he returned with a new hot water heater. This meant that yet more money was spent, but at least we could now bathe, wash dishes, and wash our clothes.

Moving upstairs, so far the fridge and stove seemed to work just fine. Geoffrey told me to hold off on using the dishwasher because he was quite literally frightened at this point about something else breaking down. It turns out that he had reason to be. We finally tried running it after about two weeks. It worked for a few minutes then suddenly stopped and filled with smoke. If the dishwasher had an alarm, I’m sure that it would have gone off. After pulling it out and taking it apart, Geoff found the root of the problem. He fixed it that evening, put it back together, and it has worked fine ever since. Thankfully we did not have to buy a new one!

Nearer the end of the month, my brother and his family came to visit us. The day of their first trip out to see our home was the most chaotic. Geoffrey was gone and so it was up to me to host and feed them that morning, then head into town for immunizations that afternoon, come back, put the kids down for a nap, and go back into town that evening for a baptism prep course. The day was long and I was so exhausted by the end of it. Upon returning home after 8 pm with two tired children, I heard an alarm going off in the house. I quickly ran inside and left Remy and Wilder in the doorway. I threw open the basement door and our cat and dog ran out, terrified. Descending the steps, I thought that it was a fire alarm and our home was going to burn down. I went into the mechanical room, and after not seeing a fire, dismantled the fire alarm to stop the noise. The beeping was insanely loud, and was still going. Panicking, I looked around the room until I thought I heard where it was coming from. I hit the silence button and finally there was peace at last.

Worried, but too exhausted to investigate, I texted my husband (who was on a train and wouldn’t see it until the following morning) that another alarm was going off. The next day we discovered that it was for our septic tank. A very long story short, we were able to get someone to come out, unfreeze our septic tank, explain everything to Geoff for a few hours, and remedy the problem. Yet, this was not the end.

I had reached my breaking point last week upon getting a letter in the mail from Information Services Corporation. Having never in my life missed a mortgage or bill payment before, it stated that we had a tax lien on the home that we had just moved from. I quickly Googled what that meant, and nearly lost it. I became so ill. Given that it was a Sunday evening, I couldn’t call anyone until the following morning. (It turns out that it was due to our water lines getting replaced the previous year, and us going on a long-term repayment plan. Everything turned out to be fine in the end.) Laying in bed that night, I pulled up the internet on my phone and saw that Remy had typed a bunch of random letters into YouTube. Worried, I scrolled through the videos to make sure that she hadn’t seen anything bad. The last video on that page was titled “Trust God First.” Curious, and very unlike what I would normally do, I clicked on it. 

I didn’t get very far into the video before I broke down. I just started crying. Up until then (and much like after my miscarriage), I had felt like God was punishing me for some unknown reason. Was I wrong in wanting a quieter and better life for my children? Did I do something in my past that I needed to be chastised for? But then I realized that no, God was permitting these things to happen in order to test me. To test us. He is allowing them to happen, just as He will be beside me every step of the way. Much like it took us five years and having faith in Him to find this acreage, I need to have patience and cast my worries aside. That will be difficult, given that it is my nature to rush through life and worry about EVERYTHING. Yet, I want to fully start trusting in the Lord. From now on, each time I start to feel anxious about something, I will remind myself that it is His will. I will get through it when I am supposed to, and He will help me.

Here’s hoping and praying that our second month goes much smoother than our first. Thanks for following along, friends! Have a beautiful week.

Emory

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