Angi's Scribbles: Pure Craziness

Craziness seems to follow me almost everywhere lately. Putting our house for sale in March seemed to start the “Madness.” You know those little prompts in your head that speaks to you so clearly no matter how softly? They seem to haunt you if you don’t know how to look at them correctly. Well, they started itching at me about five years ago, just about the time that Jason’s job transferred him back to Utah. Everything was perfect, right? My husband was finally home, my children were adjusting to life in normal, finally, and I was happy wife and mother who couldn’t have asked for a more perfect life. So why was it that those little promptings had to come?

I knew then that Jason driving over 70 minutes one way to work was ridiculous, but I loved our life in Nephi, we all loved our life in Nephi. Enough said. Even Jason said so. He knew how much my house, my yard and my ward family meant to me and to the children, it would be all right for him to drive all that way and spend all that time on the road away from his life if it meant keeping us happy, and somehow all of us were content with that. It wasn’t until a couple of years later at a recommend interview with a very Intune priesthood holder that the promptings stopped whispering and started speaking louder.

“You need to move,” he said matter of factly in the middle of our pleasant conversation. “Jason needs to be part of your family again. Take the next few years and get your finances in order and then you need to move.”

Now you may ask what it was that he knew. Surely Jason and I should get the promptings for our own family, but sometimes God sends someone to awaken you when you have been sleeping through those little whispers that he has been sending.

I knew when this man said that, that God had been trying to tell me that all along. So what did I do? I cried a little…of course I did, I had the perfect life and God’s little detour was going to disrupt that, but then I smiled because I love Jason oh so much and the thought of him being around more, being part of the family more, having time to love me more, well how could I not smile about that?

So our plans started and miracles came to help us pay off some debt and pay down our house a little and put money away for the time when it came to move. For the last three years March 15^th of 2015 sat in our heads of when to put the house for sale. December 2014 came and I mapped out what I would have to do at the start of the new year to be ready to sell in a few months. Prayers came to ask for guidance both for our family and for the family that would buy our house. Kids were emotional. Those that were normally tough were weak, those that usually battled through emotional crisis poorly arise to the change that was coming. Little manifestations of God’s tender mercies seemed to fall on us so often that it left us with little doubt that what we were doing was right.

Then came that little itch again, that one that this time I was determined to listen to. “Hurry up. Don’t wait until the middle of March put your house up for sale in two weeks.” When you are in the middle of painting and cleaning and packing excess away, the idea of moving up the listing of your house by two whole weeks seems a little impossible, but we did and magically we were ready in time. Then it was prayers that we would know the right house for us to buy when we stepped into it, that we would know that God had sent us there. Also were the prayers that whomever was supposed to buy our house would know too that God had sent them there.

4 ½ weeks later that man stepped through our door, looked at me without going passed the front room and said, “Now I know why I kept feeling like I needed to come look at your house, God has sent me here.”

I would like to say that from that point on the miracles kept happening and everything went so smoothly, but it didn’t. Oh, the miracles kept coming, at such an alarming rate it seemed to knock the wind out of all of us…but at the moment the trials started too. We looked at so many houses, all of which needed so much work, or just didn’t feel right, and I couldn’t possibly see how leaving perfect little Nephi could ever be a happy blessing. Jason was frustrated and feeling guilty, the kids were terrified and horribly sad, and I was disappointed to all get out.

But then, a light flipped on at the very last moment of our journey down the darkness that seemed to have no hope of lifting…a beautiful big house, on the rolling hills of Eagle Mountain Utah. Jason and I both looked at each other as we stepped through that front door and said, “This is it, God has sent us here.”

Offer was made and accepted…loan was secured, all that we needed was the man who was buying our house’s loan to go through…

Days drug on, nothing. Oh, it would be coming, the loan officer would say. Supposedly sometime next week was all that we would be told, but then next week would come and nothing would happen. Finally when we were down to the wire and we had already extended the offer by two weeks, the call came that we would be signing in two days. Brilliant, or so we thought until those two days went and the loan failed and a very sad man called asking us to please wait and not sell our house to someone new while he tried to get another loan. What do you do at that point? Well, you cry some more. Then you breath after all of the hysterics, you get on your knees, and you ask your Heavenly Father what he wants of you, no questions asked. Jason and I agreed to give the man one more shot knowing full well that our dream house would probably go to someone else, but it would be okay because we were being patient and trusting God, even though my heart still knew that that amazing home in Eagle Mountain, that almost seemed to glow from the spirit guiding us there, was meant to be mine. I tried to be happy and not fear as I felt like my dream was being ripped away, and somehow I was…I was happy and the fear completely melted away from me. God was in charge and he got to decide, not me, not Jason, and certainly not the world.

Miracle of miracles was the call the next day…another loan had been procured in just shy of 24 hrs. time and we were to sign on the house the very next day.

Of course then came the rush of moving and living with my brother Cullen and his wife Annalee and their cute family for a week while we waited for the owners of our new house to move out, and of course moving in after all while the amazing Jen Jen graduated from high school. Throw in the fact that we play end of school activities for about a million different schools throughout the state and grad-night parties for more than I would like to count…it really was craziness.

And yet here I sit, trying to understand how I can share all of this with all of you and let you see just a smidgen of the gratitude that I feel.

This last weekend, five of my seven siblings and I took a much needed retreat to Saint George without spouses or kids and just enjoyed time to spend with one another. So much fun, so much craziness, and so much of God’s love. Family…that has been the whole theme of my whole life, even when I was a teenager and hadn’t realized it yet. That is what God was trying to give me when he sent us here to Eagle Mountain, a chance for Jason to be more part of our family. That is why we are here, my friends, for those connections, and if you think God isn’t aware of you or doesn’t care about you, all you have to do is look at that family that you were either tossed into at birth, or you grabbed up along the way, and you can’t help but feel that little bit of gratitude that I was talking about, because it is always there waiting for us to offer it while we smile at the life…the family that our Heavenly Father has given us.

Pics from our Siblings Retreat..