Never What I Expect

January 10, 2018

Never What I Expect

I might have been a little too excited for 2018. Mike & I didn't start this year out in the best way. As I've said recently, we are starting renovations on our home. Originally, we were going to be starting with my closet as a way to ease into the construction, but does life generally go the way we plan? Mine certainly doesn't. On the night of January 2nd, Mike & I were sitting at our kitchen table and I just happened to glance at the ceiling of our front room... a little part of the paint was kind of bubbling. I quickly stood on the couch to touch it and... yep... it was wet. We had already been planning on getting the house fully inspected before we started throwing money at renovations, but this made it way more urgent. We stopped using the bathroom that was above the leak immediately (Mike had just showered so we assumed it had something to do with that - we were kinda wrong) and I called to schedule an inspection. We decided the inspection that uses infrared cameras was going to be worth the extra money so we could see the inside of the walls.

Well, yesterday, the inspector came. His name was Troy (Behind the Scenes Home Inspections is his company and I HIGHLY recommend him if you need a great home inspector). There are quite a few things that we need to fix - the house is 22 years old so we weren't surprised by most of them. Some things actually turned out a lot better than we expected. I was sure that we had bad electrical, but apparently just some of the fixtures are bad, and we already planned on replacing those.

As far as the ceiling goes, we discovered that it's actually been the toilet in the master bathroom that's leaking - where the tank meets the seat is not connected properly. It's been dripping down through the seam and that's why it's leaking onto the front room ceiling. Good news: it's nowhere near as bad as I expected! Honestly, I expected to be told that my entire house was full of mold and it was going to cost me thousands of dollars to just repair that (thank you, anxiety). Bad news: Mike is still going to have to cut into our front room ceiling to remove the damaged sheet rock - there is going to be mold - just not in the amounts that I was scared of. Yes, we're still being thrown off course a little bit, but maybe this direction is a better one.

If I've learned anything from this situation, it's this: trust God. The whole time I was stressing about this, the thought just kept coming into my head: "You have no control over this. Have faith in God and you will be taken care of." And I knew that the thought was right, but I still couldn't silence my anxiety. Did God swoop in and take away all my problems? No! That's not how we learn. Do I wish that could happen? Absolutely! But I also know that I'm going to gain so much experience from this, and I'm learning to trust in my incredibly loving Father in Heaven who ALWAYS has my back.

I know that I've been getting religious a lot lately, but I can't help but feel so grateful for this life I have. We made the goal to attend the temple weekly in 2018 and I'm already seeing added blessings. On top of that, I was recently talking to one of my cute missionaries (Caleb) about how I'm always scared to talk to people about the Gospel. So much of why I'M a Mormon and why I believe so strongly in it, is because of experiences and feelings I've had. Explaining those things to people is hard, and I just know that if someone tried contradicting those feelings - I would be offended and slightly hurt. I've always been very "You have your beliefs and I have mine" and I want to continue to be that way. BUT that doesn't mean that I can't talk about my beliefs and the experiences that have helped me get here. Talking about things that make me happy and bring me peace shouldn't offend others, and if it does, I don't think that I'm the one who needs to change.

I love this Gospel. It's made me who I am today. I would be a mess without it - just take my word for it.

I love you all, and I am always so appreciative of those who read my little rantings. Please keep following along on this crazy journey called My Life ♥