We Can't Help But Be Blessed..

I have struggled with writing this post for a little while now. When I started this blog just a few weeks ago I told myself that I would be as honest as possible in my posts. Well here's the truth, for most of my life I was very trusting and open with just about anyone and I have learned that people have to earn trust or else you end up hurt. With that being said I will begin this post to my basically nonexistent readers in hopes that maybe one day I'll have a few readers who will be encouraged by this story. Warning: this is going to a be a long post.

To begin I have to start at the beginning. A year ago (almost to the day) the Hubby and I moved from Miami to Orlando. This was always the plan, get married and move to Orlando for UCF. Adjusting to life on our own in our beautiful 582 sqft apartment was not easy. Prior to moving I worked as a secretary for my MIL (mother in law) for a year and a half. I was so grateful for the opportunity she had given me to work for her and was confident I would have no problem finding a job. Everyone needs a secretary, right? NO. I was out of a job for months, staying at home was driving me insane. This is the main reason we got our little happy ball of fur.

Isn't he just the cutest?

It wasn't until January that I began to work as a cashier at Chick Fil A on the UCF campus. It was a humbling experience that I hated 90% of the time. The coworkers were great but the work was too tiring which often lead to a messy house and eating tons of CFA. All the time I was working there I was always looking for jobs but with the Hubby and I only having one car, my range wasn't very far. This limited my options to basically zero.

It wasn't until I had basically given up on looking for a job and accepted my fate as a lifetime CFA worker (I'm very dramatic) that my sister in law told us that her old boss had recently mentioned to her in passing that he might be looking for a new legal assistant. She told me to email her my resume and she would contact him. She assured me that I was a shoe in for this job. I, on the other hand, didn't think it would really work out. I wasn't studying to become a lawyer. I was barely in school at all ( more on that later). Why would someone choose me to be a legal assistant? I only had experience working at an Insurance agency. Well within a week from that conversation I had an interview and got offered the job, starting the next week!

My "I got the job!" face.

All the while I had no job or worked at CFA making minimum wage we had bills to pay and mouths to feed. The Hubby was working hard at Menchie's (best frozen yogurt shop ever!) but hours were scarce and it just wasn't enough. Remember that awesome 582sq ft apartment I mentioned earlier? It cost a pretty penny to live there, more than 2 minimum wage jobs make that's for sure. We struggled A LOT, for a long while we lived off of the savings we had from the wedding and Hubby's financial aid refund. That got us through to October when the Hubby started working. Eventually we had to face the facts, we couldn't afford this. I said I was going to be honest. Things were bad. One meal a day bad.

With the new job we were able to afford to stay where we were but just barely. Now, our plan isn't to stay in Orlando forever. We've got another year or so and then wherever the Hubby's job search (and the Lord of course) takes us is where we will go. Well, we learned from our experience and decided we were going to look into other housing options for the next year because we refuse to go through this again when we relocate. We want to be able to have a cushion for when we leave and have to find jobs and housing where ever we end up. So after a lot of apartment searching and praying we decided that our best option was to rent a house, with roommates. Now, this wasn't ideal and certainly not what we had planned but we felt at peace with our decision. Thankfully, most of Hubby's friends moved up to Orlando at the same time we did so we weren't going to have "random roommates". Hubby's best friend (and best man at the wedding) was of course our first choice and eventually we chose a second close friend to join. 

Our Home

Because my boss is also a Real Estate broker it was fairly easy for us to find a great house within our budget that met all of our needs. The Hubby, the Best Friend, and I all moved in the Fourth of July. "Roommate 4" was spending the summer in Miami and would move in before Fall classes started. This is when things started to go wrong. "Roommate 4" contacted us and told us he wouldn't be able to move in with us. We were devastated, what would we do now? Thankfully after a crazy few weeks we were able to get another good friend to join us and he moved in. The next and most stressful crisis came August 1st, the reason I am writing this post. 

Back in December we signed a renewal lease for the apartment because we thought it was our only housing option. When we went to let them know we would no longer be renewing we were informed we were responsible for finding someone to take over that lease. Finding someone was easy, I got calls everyday from people wanting to come see the apartment. We found a girl to take over the lease and she got started on the paperwork. Once the fee for canceling our lease and finding someone else was taken out of our account we assumed everything was taken care of. On July 31st, the day before the girl was supposed to move in we got a  text message from her saying that she hadn't been able to do the paperwork with the leasing office because they would never answer the phone. She told us she was on her way to their office to get everything finalized. The next day she informed us that the leasing office had no record of her and the confirmation codes they had given her weren't working either. She also told us that her mother's credit had been stolen and she wasn't qualifying as her guarantor. I panicked. What were we going to do? We would be charged for rent the next day if this wasn't settled by 7 pm. Money we simply couldn't afford to lose.

Thankfully, Peter (Hubby) has a much better head on his shoulders and assured me things would be alright and that I didn't need to panic. I continued to panic anyway but it was nice to know he wasn't completely losing it like I was. After I got out of work at 5 pm we headed over to the leasing office to find out what exactly was happening. We were relieved when the first person we spoke to was the person who was personally working on our case. He assured us that she had been in the office earlier that day and that she had just sent in an application for another guarantor. He told us that she would most likely be able to move in that night because they were staying in the office all night to get students moved in. The moment he said that I felt the weight of the world lift from my shoulders and I could breathe. I thought to myself, "Why did I ever doubt that God would take care of it all as He always has my entire life?" Then the person helping us went on to make sure our account hadn't been charge and proceeded to say "You guys know you have a credit for "x amount of money" on your account since December, right?" All I could do was laugh and almost cry. Back in December our washer was leaking and maintenance was in and out of our apartment for a week, the credit was for the "inconvenience". This credit would basically cover 1 month's rent at our new house.

A month or so back the Hubby had wanted to post a photo on Instagram of us with our parents with the caption "We can't help but be blessed, when you've been raised by God's finest" which is a lyric from Maylene And The Sons of Disaster (a christian rock band). On our drive home from the leasing office he looked down to see that he was wearing his Maylene shirt. We are both so very lucky to have been raised by amazing Christian parents who pray over our lives on a daily basis.

He loves to make silly faces.

We both (but mainly myself) learned a great lesson that day. That when things get crazy and we don't see the light at the end of the tunnel, don't freak out God's got it under control and usually is going to bless you abundantly. All through out my life this has been true and of course I knew that I should trust God but in the midst of all the crazy it really is hard to relax. I am working towards trusting God during the storms more.

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