We’re Moving and How I’m Dealing With It

We are leaving San Antonio and uprooting to a new city. Today I’m sharing why we’re moving and how I’m dealing with it.

We're Moving and How I'm dealing with it

Why Are Moving?

Last Friday was the last day in our house. It was such an emotional day as we prepped our house for sale. For those of you who have been following along, we’ve been dreading this moment for more than a year. We have gone through numerous layoffs and job changes over the last few years. It has been an incredibly stressful three years, with multiple rounds of layoffs.

Last year, when the world locked down, oil tanked on the stock market and so layoffs began again. Even though it eventually rebounded we found ourselves facing a move as our employer was bought out by another. May I be really honest? I didn’t really expect to move. I somehow thought that God would make a way for us to stay. After all, my father is extremely sick and we have been helping care for him.

There is another caveat as well, I’ve spoken about this before, but I have lived with bipolar my whole life. It is extremely hard some days. Some days the depression is disabling. The idea of moving far away from all my friends and family is downright frightening to me. When I am sick, I rely on my family a lot to come to my rescue a lot.

we're moving and how I'm dealing with it
Our Home

I Struggle to Cope

I have been very spoiled over the last year and a half. In March of 2020, my husband was permitted to work from home. As a stay-at-home mom, this was such a welcomed opportunity. I had spent the better part of five years in our house with our two children. I was so lucky that I had my parents nearby. So many of those lonely days, I’d find myself over at their house for company. So having my loving husband just inches from me in the office brought such a comfort. I felt safe with him in the house.

My bipolar really causes me to struggle with basic changes. It is why I strictly adhere to a routine. Familiarity helps with my bipolar. Uprooting completely takes me out of routine and comfort. I even find myself extremely hesitant to explore. I didn’t use to feel this way. In fact, in my youth, I backpacked all around Europe and lived their for several years. I wasn’t afraid to explore in my twenties, but I feel vulnerable now in my forties. Funny how that happens.

I’m Worried About Homesickness

When I lived in Europe, I really struggled with homesickness. I was there for several years and I lived in Norther England in the moors which was absolutely breathtaking. In fact, I lived in West Yorkshire where Wuthering Heights was written. It was picturesque, but after the novelty wore off, I really missed home.

I desperately missed my family and friends and event though I wanted to live there and I had wonderful friends there, I sank into a deep depression. I haven’t even been here a week and already I am ready to go home. I want to sleep in my own bed, work in my own kitchen, sit on my own porch with tea, write in my own office. I had my favorite places and gosh, I love the area around my home like al the stores and restaurants. I am already missing all of that.

Please keep me in prayer that I learn to love it here and that I adjust quickly. I am so nervous about all of this. I do think that once we are in our new home, and I’m surrounded by familiar furnishings and items that it will feel more like home.

Friends Needed

I also hope I can make friends here. I think getting into a church will help with that. Although the church we are looking at is all the way in Spring, TX. We definitely want to attend a reformed Baptist church. This one, Founders Baptist, came highly recommended and so we are willing to make the trek there every week.

I’m also looking for homeschool groups and mom’s groups. I think once I have some friends, I will also feel more at home. My poor babies need friends as well. This is such a huge adjustment for all of us. I recently logged back onto Facebook for the sole purpose of trying to find groups to join. Wish me luck!

Our Housing Situation

My husband, graciously wanting to slowly transition me into this move, wanted to originally come work over here by himself until our new house is finished. I wasn’t sure what to think about it, but after a few weeks of prayer, I did not feel that was wise. I really considered that for the sake of our marriage and for the sake of our children, I should follow, even if it meant repeated, frequent visits back to my parents house in San Antonio.

We’ve rented a cute little townhouse. It is quaint and is in a quiet, small, gated community filled mostly with retirees. Thankfully, it is only about three miles from my husband’s office as well.

The New Home

Our new home isn’t going quite as planned. We stopped by on our way into to Houston and discovered that they failed to put in our fireplace. It’s fixed now, but on our second visit we discovered additional mistakes – big ones! In case you don’t know, I used to be a property adjuster. I use to help rebuild homes after hurricanes, floods, and fires. So I’m pretty familiar with the construction process. Also this is the second home we’ve built.

Our New Home
The New House is Coming Along

They put the gas line for our outdoor kitchen on the wrong brick column. Also, they failed to allow for a window in one of the bedrooms. Having an emergency egress is fire code in Texas. Pretty big mistake! A bedroom without windows! Then they are building our media room like a flex room. So they added windows where there shouldn’t be windows and failed to account for the electrical conduits that need to be installed. We have a meeting scheduled with them to discuss they errors they are making. All these errors mean additional delays. Additional delays mean staying in our rental house longer which of course is coming out of our pocket.

There have also been material delays due to COVID. Please keep us in continued prayer that we don’t have any more delays and the process goes smoothly from here on out. I certainly am anxious to move in. I don’t really feel like I can settled until I am in our new home.

We're moving and how I'm dealing with it

That’s the Latest

Thanks for tagging along with our current adventure. I’ll provide updates again soon. Have you ever uprooted? I’d love to hear what helped you feel settled or helped with homesickness. Drop a comment below.

We’re Moving and Other News

We have some news. We’re moving this year and other news like job changes, changes to my Instagram and our new homeschooling year.

we're moving and other news
This post contains affiliate links. Should you make a purchase through one of the links I provide, I may receive a small percentage at no cost to you.

You may have noticed, I’ve taken almost a month-long hiatus from the blog. I’m sorry about that, but I needed a long break. There has been so much going on in our lives over the last few months, that I needed to step away for a little while. I hope to be back now. However, you’ll see that I will have a lot of change going on in the next few months, so my blogging may be a tad sporadic. Allow me to tell you why.

We’re Moving

If you have followed this blog for any amount of time, you may know that for the last few years we have been facing job uncertainty. Like one thing after another. We’ve been office closures, layoffs, more layoffs, and now we’ve been acquired by another company. In light of that, we are moving to the Houston area. We tried to find something else that would allow us to stay here, but we couldn’t find anything.

I am not thrilled about it. All my family is here in San Antonio and I uprooted years ago. I struggled heavily with homesickness then and vowed I would never do it again! I am very concerned about being isolated without friends or family. Well, here I am, doing it again, mainly because we didn’t have any other options.

We have just started construction in a semi-custom home and I have a lot of heartache because of the cost just to stay in the same kind of home we are now. Still, I am trying to be obedient to God and trust in His plan and timing. Obviously, I’m also trying to get our current home ready to sell and that is taking a lot of my time right now. I’m sure I will be writing more about this later on when things get real! We probably won’t move into our new home until late Fall this year.

We Could Be Displaced for a While

So it is very possible that our family will be displaced because of this. My husband will have to report to work in Houston before our new house is finished. Therefore, we will very likely be separated for several months before we can be reunited permanently. I expect my boys to struggle with that. Also, we will have to sell our home around the same time. So there is a good chance I will have to live with my parents for a few months while construction concludes and we close on our new home. I have no idea how that will impact my blog schedule.

My Father Is Very Ill

My dad, who suffered a heart attack years ago in 2003, has had congestive heart failure since then. In recent years, his health has taken a serious decline and has needed a lot more care and help in the last twelve months. With every month that passes, he requires more care which has been difficult for my mother in particular who has her own health problems. Please keep him and her in prayer during this tough time. He has been in and out of the hospital since last June. It has been very hard on him emotionally and physically. It’s hard to see someone you love, suffer. Still, I must acknowledge how faithful God has been to grant us peace through all of this. Truly, His grace is sufficient.

Homeschooling

We are trying to also wrap up our homeschooling year. I admit, we are running a little behind in Math and Reading. We took time off throughout the year and we still need to wrap up some subjects. We finished Handwriting but should finish up Science, Geography, and Spelling in about a week. I expect that we will continue Math and Reading into July. In August we will start our new school year.

I have received a lot of our homeschooling curriculum and I will be creating a blog post that goes into detail about our choices. I still need to order a few subjects and should hopefully have the post up soon. Then comes planning the year out which is always a major undertaking! I’m not sure how all of this will play out including starting our new school year with moving so be patient with me and this blog.

My Little Guy Is Turning Six

My little guy is turning six this weekend and we are having a family party. I am so excited for my cute boy and his birthday request was very cute this year. Or nerdy? Maybe nerdy is the better word, but I think it is still cute. He absolutely loves Math and has really enjoyed the Netflix show Number Blocks and so he asked for a number block party (Math party).

I should note that they don’t make any number block party stuff, so this mama is going to have to figure out how to make that happen!

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My Instagram Has Changed

If you are following my Instagram, you may notice a huge shift in my content. I’ve gone from promoting this blog to promoting Christ. I had been so bothered by all the things going on in the world and to me the solution is simple. It a sin problem and the Gospel is the solution. I am still trying to figure out where my account is going to settle. I really want to keep sharing theology, but I feel such a beginner Christian compared to other Theology accounts. It’s odd since I have been a Christian all my life. I have been prayerfully considering what exactly God wants me to do with it. Either way, I want God to be glorified, not me.

I used to only share things about my homeschool life and life as a stay home mom and for a while there, boldly proclaiming the Gospel seemed most important. I still think that should take front stage, but I am also considering that glorifying God also includes living out biblical womanhood. Therefore, I think I will be interjecting more of my daily life back into my IG schedule.

Sharing the gospel and Theology has really been an interesting experience. When I first started sharing about Christ I lost about 200 friends. These weren’t strangers. These were people I knew. Five women from my mom’s group unfollowed me within the first few weeks. One, deleted and blocked me on every social media account. Another even removed me from all her accounts including her business accounts. Ten different old co-workers unfollowed me. People I had been close to. I expected to lose a lot of my atheist friends. I did not expect to lose friends who were professing Christians. But that just tells you that many Christians are receiving a watered-down gospel with no real substance or conviction.

I’ve Been Praying About My Old Posts

Over the last year and a half, my theology has changed dramatically. My theology has gradually become more reformed. Reformed theology seems to be a very love it or hate it thing in the Christian community, but I do think it is the correct lens from which to view scripture. It also radically corrected me on worldly ideas that I had adopted. In particular, things like self-love and other worldly things that I feel God has convicted me on. Therefore I think I will be going through my old blog posts and deleting things where I feel like I have misled my readers away from God.

I have repented to God for adopting secular world views that are masquerading as Christianity. I’m very glad that God allowed me to see the truth about where I was deceived because when you were deceived you don’t know that you were deceived.

I’ve also considered removing some of my journal prompt posts because as I dig deeper into scripture itself I feel that things like self-discovery or looking within yourself for answers is a very secular worldview.

The Bible is sufficient to understand ourselves, to understand the world to understand our problems. So I am seriously considering removing some of my journal prompts. I myself personally stopped journaling for that reason.

For now I’m going to continue to pray about it and to also see what the Bible says I am about things like that. Sometimes the Bible allows us some Christian liberty on secondary issues I’m also going to seek wise counsel from other women who I feel have very sound theology and ask them what they think before I do anything really drastic so bear with me.

No Television

One of the major changes that have taken place in my life in the last six months has been the fact that I have almost entirely given up television. I was always an avid reader when I was young but once I had children it just sort of fell by the wayside. Instead, I actually spent a good amount of time vegging out in front of the TV which is very unproductive. About six months ago, my husband and I felt like we were wasting too much time in front of the TV. We were also very off-put by the content on TV. As we became closer to Christ we could not fritter away our free time watching some of the very things that Christ died for. We started by cutting out some of our favorite shows because they glorified sinful things. We started to replace that time with bible study or reading and honestly, we just found we had little to no interest on TV.

In an upcoming post, I’m going to share the books that I have already read this year with a quick review I and links if you’re interested in reading them yourself.

That’s it for now, friends. I will keep you posted on our moving news.

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Happy Planner, Jobs and Hope

Happy Planner, jobs, and hope. Today, I’m sharing a little about the things going on in our lives this week as we continue job hunting and chase dreams.

Happy Planner, jobs and hope

First, I want to thank all the good friends and readers who have asked about our job situation. It’s been a bumpy ride full of highs and lows. So, I thought I would write here about the recent plot twists that have occurred for those interested. If you need to catch up, read my prior post, The Next Chapter.

The Job Stuff

Easter weekend we drove to Houston for an interview and Dan got the job. We felt relieved. We received an offer the following week. However, it was lower than expected and over the next few weeks, hubby tried to renegotiate the terms, but they didn’t budge much. They wouldn’t pay to relocate us to Houston, nor would they allow us to push out the start date so we could afford the move financially. Talk about a rock and a hard place. The deeper into the woods we went, the more it seemed like maybe this isn’t the job for us. Honestly, this whole process has been so stressful and discouraging. But we keep putting our hope in the Lord, that even though we can’t see it, He is working on a solution.

Dan has another opportunity in Houston. So we will wait to see if that produces any fruit. We’ve passed the phone interviews so we are on our way to an in-person interview probably this coming week. Please continue to keep us in prayer that we find the right job.

The Happy Planner

Onto my news. This week, I applied for The Happy Planner ® planner squad. The squad is group of people (fans) selected to represent the Happy Planner as ambassadors online and on social media.

Until now, I’ve been too intimidated to apply for the planner squad. Too afraid of the rejection, if I’m being honest. But I’ve had so many people encourage me to apply this year because they know the deep devotion I have for the Happy Planner. They saw the transformation I had when I first discovered it in 2015. They see me share it enthusiastically with everyone I meet. As one friend put it, “you’re already an influencer because of everyone you introduced it to – this just makes it official.”

If you want to read my full sappy love story with the Happy Planner, read my post, How the Happy Planner Changed My Life. I realize the odds are against me. The Happy Planner fanbase is bigger than ever, but it’s like the lottery. Someone has to win and you’ll never win if you aren’t playing. It’s a dream of mine.

Can I tell you a secret? I almost feel ridiculous for even trying.

It feels impossible to be selected, but we have to chase our dreams no matter how silly or unlikely they might seem to others. Don’t give up on your dreams. Giving up is the surest way to fail.

happy planner, jobs and hope

Hope

The past twelve months has seemed like a “a losing season.” There was lots of loss (friends, family, jobs). But I have hope that things are about to change. Hope is the happy anticipation of good. It is the belief that good things will happen regardless of current evidence. Through hope, we know our situation can change, for the good, in an instant.

I have hope. I believe God has good things in store for us. He can give Dan the right job and me the planner squad. He’s bigger than any road blocks. But even if he doesn’t, I know he still has good, amazing plans for us (Jeremiah 29:11). I know there are still good things on the horizon, even though things feel bleak now. I have hope.