Three Things that Help Me when it's hard (or has turned to complete crap ;)

Oh how I loved this!

Hey blog friends!  I haven't been around here in quite some time.  Decided to bust this baby out to tell you all what all has been happening since we left Austin and moved to Seaside, FL.

Just in case you may have thought that we are living the high life (which, lets be honest, living at the beach is always going to be a plus!), I wanted to bring some real-ness and give you some perspective.  Also, I wanted to share some things that I'm learning.  I truly am having a life-changing amazing time, and all of this plays its part in that, yet this *feels* like one of the hardest times of my life.  If you've experienced something similar, or if you feel abandoned to chance or circumstance, I want to be here for you- sharing what has helped me along the way!

these three....

We love the pace of life here, always have.  So when David's job ended in Austin, TX, we went on vacation...naturally- that's what people do right when they are trying to figure out what to do?  Just us?  I know we don't "work" the way most people do, but I do highly recommend feeding your soul when you are not sure what to do next.  When you are waiting on your intuition and faith to catch up to the next chapter, taking a break, resting, and doing what you love is a good idea in my book.

So fast forward (for more on the story of how we got to Seaside in the first place, check out this episode from my podcast with Heather, The Practical Minimalists) a couple weeks after we got here...

We had housing set up for 5 months, renting monthly from two different homes in Naturewalk Subdivision.  Not a do-able feat down here, but we were pumped and felt like we were led here with our new jobs and housing wins.  Yet, a week after we got here, had already sold all our stuff to move here and were getting settled into our first home, our second home- the one from May-Sept- became totally unavailable to rent.

We then set out on a three-week long home-hunt right before peak season which led us to comments like this, "Well, maybe we can rent a home for $3200 a month that smells bad and is tiny?" or "Maybe we can make that one work with the pretty view, even though we had to walk over the dog poop in the master and they had 13 other pets??"  Seriously.  These were our conversations...

At some point during our home-hunt, we decided to take a different approach.  We decided to have blind faith that something amazing was out there for us, and we could only surrender control in each given moment to that possibility- not searching/striving/settling/controlling, but just practicing surrender.

Let me just tell you that surrendering is hard as crap.  Like super, super hard.

Surrendering to the fact that there is Someone out there that has Our Good in mind.  Surrendering to the fact that I could not magically create a home for us in our budget out of thin air (although, I tried this many times ;).

We ended up renting a weekly rental, deciding we didn't want to spend that kind of money again, and then almost giving up, surrendering living here all together because we had no housing options at all.  (Meanwhile, we do just have a couple car loads of stuff we are carting around, but by the thought of a third house, we were wanting to be more settled and not moving stuff from house to house to house).

Enter my community.  They found us a house.  Two houses actually.  My amazing bosses at The Art of Simple have some wonderful community connections and they found us this beautiful, wonderful Magnolia-esque dream home in our price range.  We saw it, and even though it came unfurnished, we decided to sign a year lease.  It was wonderful.  I walked throughout it, posted about it, was so proud of it, and dreamed up all the ways I would decorate and furnish it a little at a time over the coming months.  We even purchased new beds for everyone and some household necessities.

#minimal

This bliss lasted exactly 3 1/2 days.  We began to notice that the floors were wavy- yes, "wavy".  Turns out a dishwasher was installed wrong and leaking through the entire home.  The problem kept making other problems.  People came out and tore up the floors (those beautiful floors!!!).  We lived with 7 very loud dehumidifiers for 7 days (a rather difficult thing for our sensory challenged kiddos).  Finally, our landlord gave up- He knew that this would take several months to fix and he gave us all our money back and cancelled our lease.

Remember that second home our community found us?  Well, we live there now.  We had one housing option and it was affordable.  It's not exactly where we would choose to live (it's someone's home with all their stuff in it), but it is a current roof, a spacious roof with a pool...even if the decor is the opposite of my taste ;).

all this lasted 3 1/2 days...

I first wanted to title this post "just kidding"  This, however, is not a negative nelly post.  I'm actually really thankful for this whole experience and some truly neat things have come from it, including free rent!  I wanted to share what has been helping me...maybe it will help you to if things are feeling crappy today...

1.  I've learned to practice an unshaking faith that Everything Is and Will Work Out in our Favor.  I used to think faith was just Choice, but now I think it might be more a combo of Choice and a Muscle.  So when we had lived in this beautifulness for only three days and they started tearing up the floor and putting in a crazy loud dehumidifiers, I kept saying to myself and our family, "This is going to lead to something better, I know that it will...." Did I always feel it?  No.  But somehow my faith muscles are getting stronger and it actually did lead us to at least a better financial situation!
  

2.  This has been hard, really, really hard, and I'm learning to talk about it.  But wait, I thought you were learning that everything was going to be Ok...Why talk about how hard it is?  Yes, I am, and I'm also learning that processing and metabolizing the Hard and my strengthening my Faith muscles growing are NOT mutually exclusive!  A sweet friend came into the store I was working at the other day and asked how I was doing....and I actually told her the truth!  I'm not really about ignoring feelings and this is been really hard on all five of us, but many times I will take on the role of "make it ok for everyone...It's your job, Eryn, to make it ok!!!"  So I've let myself cry, moan, feel the loss, and complain.  I also believe so much in Abundance and Freedom for my Family, but that does not come by ignoring the Hard; it comes by going THROUGH the hard!  Both of these things are helping me.

3.  Oils, Back Rubs, and Naps...Basically Self-Care.  I know this sounds cliche but sometimes it just takes giving yourself a "Yes" to change your whole state of mind!  I've also shared some of that here. These past two months have been challenging in the sensory department, the emotional department, and the family department.  So David will raindrop some emotional oils on me at night.  I take naps when I can.  I ask for a back rub...or let the kids rub lotion on my arms and I'm a whole different kind of happy person!

What helps you when things get really, really hard?  Feel free to share in the comments <3 Eryn