A New Start Part 1

It has been forever since I’ve been able to blog and I really have missed it every second. But now that our lives are more stable I can finally pick back up where I left off. What’s that? You want to have a moment by moment commentary from the last nine months since I blogged? Well, I will spare you from the long and mostly complicated details, but I will give you a summary of our lives since last February when we departed South Carolina bound for Oklahoma.

February and March 2010

We said our last goodbyes to our friends, finished packing up our truck and set out. We had to leave some stuff behind. I guess it’s hard to squeeze 12 years of your life into a 24 foot Uhaul. We stopped in to see my family in Alabama and spend the night there. On our 15th Wedding anniversary we started the 12 hour drive to Oklahoma. To make a long story short, we were going to live in a relative’s house, but their house was under renovation. When we arrived we realized it was simply not safe for the kids and that arrangement wouldn’t work out. This house was in a town about 45 minutes from Tulsa and the town didn’t have a store that David could transfer his job to, so now here we were with no job, no house and no money.

David’s sister offered for us to stay with them in their apartment in Tulsa for the weekend until we could figure out what to do. That Monday some of the kids started getting sick with some crazy high fever, coughing thing. The following Friday, Bailey got it and by Sunday she was in the hospital with RSV/Pneumonia. Welcome to Oklahoma.

You would think that I would be bitter about how things were disintegrating for us. And, oh let me tell you, I was. Things had really been going downhill steadily since David came back from guarding the detainees in Cuba back at the end of 2003. He was gone for a year with the National Guard, but he was really gone for the next two years as well from PTSD. I kept joking that I was still waiting on my husband to come back from Cuba. He finally started getting back to normal in 2005. In 2006, he got hired on with an investment firm. And we all know how that ended. We had been struggling financially through two years of trying to make that job work and one more year of unemployment. So, to say we were burdened emotionally and finacially and leaving South Carolina with a heavy heart was an understatement. I knew God was still there, but did he forget about us? Was he making an example out of us? Was all of this somehow our fault because we don’t know how to manage our money (Dave Ramsey I’m talking to you!) Why would God give us all these kids and then pull the blanket out from under us? Well…………

We realized that this starting over thing was much harder than just starting out to begin with. But, some things worked out in our favor. David’s supervisor from the old store had decided to keep David in the system, so when we realized that our stay in Tulsa was going to be more permanent, he went to a store about a block from where we were staying with David’s sister, and transferred there. The store manager really liked him and gave him 40 hours every week even though he only transferred into a part time position. But unfortunately 40 hours a week making a little more than minimum wage does not cut it. David looked for a part time job, but he didn’t have set hours, so that proved to be difficult. David’s sister and brother in law were both jobless at that point as well so we decided to pool our resources and try to make it work. But, yeah, 16 people in one household. Well. Enough said.

Two of our girls celebrated their birthdays that month. Bailey turned one and Bethany turned eight.

We started attending a Free Will Baptist church in the area. I really didn’t want to. Mainly because I felt let down by God. And because I couldn’t talk about our situation without crying. I really didn’t have much to say that was positive. I know I had been in a depression that started the summer of 2009. I remember talking with David and saying, “I just want to be happy again.” I know we have joy in the Lord. But, the circumstances just wore me down. I just wanted my mood to naturally default to “happy” like it used to, not “sadness” like it had been. Life by that point was just so hard.