It’s officially been one month since me and the kiddos moved into our new home. I’ve been really processing it over the last few weeks, and some days it still doesn’t feel real. This is the first place that truly felt like ours to me. Last weekend, I was up late working in the living room (per usual) and David yelled from the room, “My eyes sleeping isn’t working! They won’t stay closed!” I usually tell him to try harder and go to sleep, but I was in a chipper mood and told him he could come sit on the couch with me until he fell asleep. After about 15 minutes or so he randomly said with a smile, “Felicity said we’re the only ones who live here. We’re the only ones who live here?” I smiled back and answered, “Yes, baby. We’re the only ones who live here.” To which he replied, “Aaaawwww yay! Just Felicity, David and mommy! No body else lives here!”
I almost cried.
I had never really noticed that he’d always felt like we were in someone else’s house to. Me and their dad departed 4 years ago yesterday; two weeks before David was born. Since then we went from his house (which never felt like mine and he often reminded me was not), to my sister’s couch, to my grandmother’s guest room, to the labor & delivery room, to my parents’ house, to finally our apartment (that we LOVED!) for the last two years, until finally moving back into my parents’ house last August so I could start saving and paying off debt. After being given the sad face by 8 million or so lenders and landlords as they told me how much divorce often poorly impacts a women’s credit and it’s so hard of a hole to climb out of, how they “see it all the time”, I started to feel like we’d never get a house.
Then suddenly, God opened a door that only He could. Last year when I was getting discouraged in my search, my big sister Jennifer Lucy Tyler told me, “You’re not getting these houses because the house God has for you is going to come in a way that only He will be able to get the credit for it. In a way that you’ll know it’s all Him.”
Almost exactly one year later I went from being about to settle for a house that was very nice but not exactly what we wanted to having an almost perfect house for us in less than a 48 hour timespan. In a neighborhood I’d actually prayed about moving into since 2014, lol. I would randomly drive through this neighborhood looking at houses and just pray before heading to Carpe Diem to work for hours for what we would need in order to move into one of those house.
We’re here now.
This is our home.
Felicity asked for “three windows” aka three bedrooms (lol) so they could share a room and have a playroom. David asked for a chimney so we could make s’mores like when we lived in our apartment. They both asked for a backyard “like the one at grandpa’s house”.
They got it all.
People ask why I work so hard. This is why. People say I work too much. Nothing is too much for them. They deserve moments like this. I’ll ALWAYS fight with everything in me to make sure they have moments like this.
To everyone who has been there for us during this season of transition, thank you. Each of you know who you are. I am blessed to have you as part of my tribe. To everyone still pushing towards scratching goals off your list one by one, keep going. Surrender it all to Him. He has everything you need in His hands and WANTS you to have it. Never allow struggles to make you feel like He’s isn’t on your wide; He’s always on your side.
xoxo,
Ashley Danielle