Blessings in Disguise
I’m usually a Glass Half Full kind of girl, an eternal optimist you might say…That being said, the last few months have been sprinkled with many trials for my family. While I’m sure I did not handle them all with grace, I try to remind myself that God often sends us trials so that we may better understand our blessings.
James 1:2 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
The explosion as seen from our backyard
As you may already know, our home is in the Richmond Hill neighborhood that endured a massive home explosion on November 10, that killed two people and damaged or destroyed over 100 homes. We were fortunate that our house was (minimally?) damaged. Other than the 2 nights immediately following the explosion, we had been living there pretty normally…Blessing #1.
On January 8, we met with our restoration contractor and the plan was to move out and get started our home repairs right away… as in the next week. Aaahhhhh! How was I supposed to pack up my stuff, move into a hotel and make all these house decisions in that short of time, all while working a full time job, juggling kids’ activities and all the other demands of life?
I called my mom, in a panic for advice. She and my dad live in New Orleans but they had just been visiting us for a late Christmas and had only left 4 days prior…so I absolutely was astounded when she booked a flight back to Indy the very next day to help us out. Blessing #2 was absolutely the biggest blessing of this whole ordeal! My mom has such a great knowledge of construction and she is a whiz at packing and organizing. I honestly could not have done it without her.
Now the original estimate indicated that we would be out of the house for 2 weeks and the insurance company was going to set us up in two hotel rooms during that time. My gut instinct told me it was going to be much longer than 2 weeks and let’s face it, no one wants to be stuck in a hotel room for that long unless your on vacation. I spent the next 2 days searching for a more suitable housing arrangement and was just about to give up when Blessing #3 came from my co-worker. She saw my anxiety and searched diligently to find a nice 3 bedroom apartment in Greenwood that had 3 weeks left on a lease. Through many emails, phone calls and the application process we were able to secure the apartment for move in on the 15th. My contractor even offered his crew to help us move our own furniture & belongings into the apartment…Blessing #4.
So we got busy packing and moved in pretty easily and the rest of that week the moving crew continued to pack up and store all the rest of our belongings. The real work was to begin then on the 21st then. Well, long story short, it’s now March and we are still in the apartment but we can see the finish line. We are hoping to be back in the house in less than a week now so check back soon and I’ll update you on the rest of our blessings through this journey.
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