Growing Pains; First Two Weeks in the Valley

Yesterday marked two weeks of me eeking along on the start of our rural living journey. My first three days was spent intermittently crying over missing my family and furiously throwing myself into painting our living room. I think I went through the five stages of grief and loss quite rapidly (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance for all you psychology gurus) and came out on the other side ready to take things on.  My fourth day I was feeling brave enough to attend the Aeneas Valley church down the road. I knew that I wanted to be apart of a church here in my new home town and I also knew that if I put off that awkward step of going to a new church for the first time, I wouldn't go at all. I jumped in head first and went my first week here and oh what blessing it has been. Without going into too much detail or bashing other churches I have attended - because that's not my intention - all I can say is that every single person seemed like they loved God deeply and wanted to be there. I don't know about you guys but I haven't really ever enjoyed church enough to where I look forward to going...ever. And that's not how God intended the body of Christ to be! I had just about accepted that my fate was to grumpily go to church the rest of my life to make God happy. Here I look in the front row and the 90 year old woman sitting there is clapping, laughing and shouting  "Praise Jesus" in the middle of the pastor's sermons. It feels so alive! 

OK - I'm getting off topic. So that was basically my first week. Attending the church spurred me to daily prayer and asking God to help me trust in Him that everything is going to be OK and rely on him 110%. You know how they say not to pray for patience? Well I prayed for faith and I got a heap load of frustrations that kept sending me back to God in prayer. On my Instagram page I noted this and I realized it probably came across as maybe I was regretting praying for faith because of how all these bad things started happening after. No, I KNEW that's how God would handle it. How else am I supposed to learn? 

The days to follow have been filled with a week long internet disconnect (the ONLY way to connect with outside world here due to relying on wifi to make phone calls) which made applying for jobs impossible; land line issues, unexpected expenses, intense manual labor, my husband lost his job after only 3 weeks, my car had a part fall off on the highway and I had to get it fixed, and that's just to name a few! I got the hint quickly, I knew that God is trying to teach me to just TRUST that he ALWAYS has a better plan! 

It's been two weeks now and I am feeling much better. I can see that God is in control and honestly, I would have moved here just to go to this church. Not even kidding.Things are still hard. Both my husband and I are unemployed and my two horses are coming this weekend which makes me nervous because of the liability and expense (I've been spoiled with my mom taking care of all of details of horse ownership lately) but also think that I will feel like this is a little bit more like home when I can see my horses everyday. 

My husband and I have job interviews which is promising and hopefully we will begin gaining income again soon so that we can purchase a 4wd car for the winter which is a must here. 

I apologize that this post doesn't have much of a point other than to say there's been a lot of growing pains to our rural life but we are excited still to be here, see this lovely country side through it's seasons, and see what is in store for us employment wise. 

Cheers!

-L