The point of this blog is, basically, that kids and blended families and mental illness are all hard, but that staying rooted in certain ways will get you through it. Maybe not with a shred of grace or dignity, but at least with the ability to fight another day. Sometimes, in this journey, I’ve spent months and even years not sure I’d survive it. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say I wasn’t sure I’d find the joy again at times. Sometimes everything felt very dark and alone for a very long time.
I am a Christian woman. I don’t judge you if you don’t believe or don’t believe what I believe. And I have certainly never been a model of Christianity. I don’t even go to church these days. But I believe in Jesus, and you need to know that for this story. I’m 100% sure that I heard his voice once. Just once, but the timing was impeccable. As I suppose one should expect of a deity.
Jack and I were dirt poor when we started dating. Dirt. Poor. He lived with his mom and I lived with mine, in fact. It was a pretty sad state of affairs. Slowly, we dug ourselves out of the debt left behind by first marriages and years of poor choices, but it took a long time.
One thing I didn’t like for our children, and especially for Pitcher, Princess & Prankster, was how often they moved. It seemed like they were never able to really put down roots and have a home that was THE home. Do you have one? Is there a specific house that comes to mind if I ask you where you grew up? That’s what I wanted for our kids.
But….we were stuck renting for a while. When we moved in together, I moved into the house Jack was renting with the three older kids. Dude shared a room with Prankster. It was too small for a family of six with two dogs. We made it work for a while and kept our eye out for something else. Finally we found a home that was big enough for our family. Everyone would have their own room. There was a fenced yard. It was in a neighborhood that would keep the kids in the same school district. It was also up for sale, but the owner was willing to do a rent-to-own contract. Our credit was shot. There was no way we’d be approved to buy, so we worked with the owner to rent until we could.
For about three years, the house served us well. In that time, our financial situation changed. Frankly, it changed more than we anticipated. By the time we could buy the home, the home felt like settling for something we didn’t really want. I still feel a little bit guilty for this, but we couldn’t end up in a mortgage for a house that we didn’t feel good about for the long term. We called our realtor, a woman Jack grew up with, and we decided, in the long run, to build a home that seemed like a far-fetched dream to us only a few years before. The owner of our rental home was definitely not happy, but didn’t have much choice in the matter.
This is where we are supposed to live happily ever after in our new home, right? Well, dear reader, it was not as easy as that.
I would not out him in this way if it wasn’t important for the story. Prankster was a bed-wetter for a long time. To make it fair, I will also out myself. Me too. Even as an adult, there have been a couple of incidents for me. Life is sucky that way sometimes. Anyway, one night, about three weeks before we were to close on the new build, Prankster had a problem and got up in the middle of the night to take a bath. He started the tub and then went back to his room, where he fell asleep.
At some point, Princess woke up. It was hot upstairs and she had to pee. Her bedroom was across the hall from the bathroom. Dude’s was next to the bathroom and Prankster was at the end of the hall. Our room was next to Princess. When Princess stepped into the hallway to cross to the bathroom, the carpet squished. She immediately registered that something wasn’t right. She quickly realized the tub had been left on and was overflowing. She turned it off and ran to our room.
When the knock on the door came, Jack heard it before I did. I don’t remember why he was the one who got up. Maybe Princess specifically asked for him. What I do know is that it occurred to me that it was damn hot upstairs. Then I went back to sleep.
I don’t know how much time passed here, but I got up at some point looking for Jack. I went to the top of the stairs and heard a commotion. I walked halfway down the stairs and saw Pitcher, Princess and Jack with towels. They were mopping walls. Why were the walls leaking? I was still stupid with sleep. I must have said something because Jack told me the upstairs tub had overflowed. And at that moment, part of the ceiling fell down. It was raining in our living room.
My brain actually broke in that moment. Very rarely have I experienced anything like it. Pitcher, Princess and Jack all stared at me. They all waited for me to break. But this was so far beyond that. I couldn’t even fully comprehend what was happening. It was all just white noise for a second.
We’d just told the landlord we weren’t buying the house. She was livid. We had the closing on our new house pending. The finances were just barely good enough to do it. Our dream was hanging in the balance and I knew, in that moment, that it just wasn’t going to happen.
And that’s when I heard it. I swear to you, I heard a voice that was not my voice. “I’ve got this.” That’s all it said. And I felt better immediately. To this day, I am convinced it was the voice of God. It’s the only time I’ve ever heard it.
The landlord was NOT happy. Her insurance company sued us, yelled at us on the phone and generally berated us. The next month was not pleasant, but we did manage to walk away unscathed. We got out of the lawsuit. We closed on our dream home. We moved in and made our kids rooms what they wanted them to be. And we did, actually, for the most part, live happily ever after. The thing is, happily ever after doesn’t mean without trials. It just means being grateful for what you’re blessed with that helps you weather those trials.
Anchors. They’re critical, and God is one of mine.
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