Some Hard Stuff....

I have had this written out for a while now. I have debated posting this because I am having a hard time putting my feelings into words without everything sounding ungrateful, which is not at all how they are intended. Please be gracious with me as I'm trying to be honest, yet having a hard time finding the right words....
At the same time, I had an email conversation with a friend in the past week that had to do with some of this- and I just want you to know (you know who you are) that this was written out well before we talked and in no way was I thinking of that discussion when I wrote this, as our conversation had not yet taken place when I wrote this, so please don't think I'm addressing anything at you!

**********************************************************************************

I once read in a book a girl who grew up in the Congo and later moved to the US mention how she would get so angry every time she'd hear someone complain of hunger. Because, she said, once you experienced hunger like what she experienced, you find it hard to fully love anyone who has not experienced that type of hunger. Where your body hurts because it is so protein deprived....
I am feeling that way when I hear people talk about the economy in a way like they know what's going on.
Unless you lost your house(s), your home, your job, your car, your health insurance while you were pregnant and also had a toddler... your 80 acres of land worth tens of millions of dollars that you just walked away from because it became worthless, your several hundred thousand dollars that you personally had invested in that property- every single penny you had made in your life up until that point, your very own grocery money. Unless you really know what it's like- don't pretend to. It's a slap in the face.
And I have to work on that.
People experience things to varying degrees and that doesn't invalidate their experience any less, just because they maybe didn't lose as much as we lost.
I read magazines occasionally and sometimes they'll talk about "How To Live On Less In Hard Times" or something similar to that. They'll say something ridiculous like "instead of buying your coffee on your way to work, make it at home."
Seriously.
If you're able to come up with money to buy a coffee every day (or even once a week!), then NEWSFLASH: YOU'RE NOT THAT FINANCIALLY HURT!!
And who do you think you are pretending to be?
Or "Instead of buying your clothes at the mall, try Target. Cute styles, less on the price tag."
How about- if you can afford to but ANY clothes- YOU'RE SHOULDN'T BE COMPLAINING ABOUT MONEY!!
I think our oldest wore size 2T clothes until they were about to burst at the seams, because $3 a shirt for a few shirts wasn't worth not buying our couple jugs of milk we'd need for the week.
And I know some people live every day of their life with money being such a concern.
For us, this came so much out of left field. I mean, we were going along just fine in life. Better than just fine. Money wasn't came by easy or all around us by no means, but we definitely were not hurting.
We had a boat, a nice house, we occasionally would go away to a hotel as a family here and there.... And we worked hard for those things! At the peak of the market, we only had our house mortgaged for 50% of what it was worth! Because we kept making "good investment choices" and were able to put a huge chunk down when we purchased our house.
And then....
Well, we realized it had nothing to do with "good investment choices"- it had to do with things outside of our control.
If our money was in the stock market, it would be just as much gone as it was by being in real estate by now. It just would have been a slower death.
And if we could have rode out the real estate crash, then we would have been better on the other end.
But for everything we had to lose, it would have taken millions of dollars to ride that out. And obviously, we couldn't ride it out.
And it hurts, so bad.
In a way that shocks me, actually. Like I didn't think all this would affect my emotions quite so much. It's just money, right? Just stuff?
But no, it's our stability being ripped out under our feet. And knowing you couldn't do anything about it. And knowing that everything we've worked hard for could, again, disappear, seeing as it wasn't our actions that made this happen to begin with.
And it's 5 years of our working to create a good financial base for us thrown out. Completely.
It's like we just got married all over again and are starting back at the very beginning.
Back to an apartment.
Back to paycheck to paycheck.
Back to paying all the bills, but there not being anything left after that.
Back to renting a movie being a mini-luxury (well, not quite to that extreme this time thankfully!)
Yes, those are all obvious blessings. (The fact that we can rent a movie! Obviously we're not hurting anymore! We can pay all our bills, that is such a huge, huge blessing!)
But, still back to where we started nevertheless.
And now we're starting over with 2 boys, and one on the way. And we worked so hard to do things in the right order the first time.
To buy our first house before having children. To make sure we could live off only 1 income so I could stay home and raise our children. And only after we accomplished those things did we decide that we were good to start our family.
And that was exciting to work towards that for several years together!
But, now it's like that was all for nothing. What was the point?
We're back to an apartment.
A place that is not ours. That is quite small, and we're going to add a 3rd baby to this mess of a life?
Where's stability? Where's one pregnancy where I'm not having to deal with so much stuff that life seems constantly like it's filled with turmoil and spinning out of control?
In a time where you'd like to be stable and focused on your body, this time for me is always reserved for life's hardest times.
When I was pregnant with E we were going out of town to visit Ben's mom almost every weekend because she was dying, and she passed away 2 weeks before he was born. Talk about unstable. Watching my husband physically lower his mom into the ground, and burying her by hand with his sister and step dad. Seeing death, and yet growing life and feeling my baby kick and twirl inside of me while watching.
And a roller coaster of emotions I don't wish on anyone.
And with Ez, well when I was pregnant with him we were losing everything, grasping frantically at anything that looked like it would be something that might be worth hanging onto for dear life to help pull us out of this mess. And having to find another place to live. And knowing we'd be moving when he was 8 weeks old, but not knowing how we'd be able to afford another place.
And here we go.... this one isn't losing a parent or our home. But we just don't have a home. We know we'll be moving at some point out of this place, but when? The thought of having a 3rd child in this tiny 2 bedroom apartment does not sound appealing.
I know it's a blessing that we have a roof over our heads we can afford. And in no way to I mean to sound ungrateful.
I'm hurting right now. Still trying to recover from everything we went through. From living day to day in survival mode for so long. Putting one foot in front of the other even when the path you're walking on has disappeared. It's not about the stuff- the stuff can all be here, or go, and either way it's just stuff.
It's about the emotions involved in living so scared of today and what it may bring, trying your hardest to trust in our Providing Father, yet knowing that we don't know the future. And He sure doesn't promise an easy life to anyone. And providing has a different meaning to Him than to us anyway.
Praying, crying out, begging for jobs to make enough money to pay today's bills, to put food on the table for today. Tomorrow was never mentioned, because we learned fully to only think about today- tomorrow was too overwhelming.
That was life every day, for quite some time.
From feeling like we've been married for over 9 years and worked very hard for what we had, and yet it definitely doesn't look that way, as we sit on our couch in someone else's living room.
As the 'things' that I have to make my house feel like a home are boxed up and stored away because we have no room for them here.
Home hardly feels like "home" anymore.
Oh it's so not about the house.... It's about the pain of everything. This hurts, this hurts so badly.