“Sometimes we need to know we’ve been delivered TO someone not just FROM something” So, I am sitting trying to think best how to give an update. (Thanks for asking by the way, don’t we all want to know someone is out there thinking of us, caring how our life is going..) So, my quote up top here is what is really resonating with me right now. We as a family have not yet been delivered from the Toxic nightmare (read earlier posts for the full story of what that means) BUT I know that one way or another ultimately we will be…whether here or Heaven..so I’m not here to give some wonderful update about our great health, a huge lawsuit win, or a great new safe home to move into. But to know, as the quote says, that my focus can be on the Someone who delivers, rescues, redeems, has helped me to regain my perspective. I am a follower of Christ, I believe in the One True God and I have Hope because He is my Hope-giver! HE, God, is what gives my life it’s purpose and He is what I have been delivered TO from oh so many things in the past. Often He tells us to ‘remember’, to rehearse in our mind, to recall the things He has done, to purposefully tell the ‘lies’ the Truth.
Many many many times, way more than I care to admit, I am forgetful. I don’t remember and I focus on what is in that moment stealing all my attention. Right now it is STILL the Toxic nightmare. This ‘season’ that is apparently not going to go away is constantly in the forefront of my mind. It sucks away wayyy to much of my day and it threatens to do me in…. I forget what all He has delivered me from and how much better my life is when my focus is on Him and things of eternal value.
So, before I give a quick update let me say this...mostly we are, as a family, trying to really navigate WHY we are here (on planet earth). What our purpose is, how we can best live that out & how we can move forward in a way that keeps our focus NOT on our circumstances or what we’ve been delivered from or need to be delivered from BUT on the Maker and what He considers important, valuable, needed…. Focusing on the Lover of my Soul & how I can grow in my relationship with Him & lead (with Ray) ,my family in loving Him with EVERYTHING!
We have reached a decision that is incredibly terrifying to me as a mom but it is really the only choice we appear to have at this time. We are choosing to move home. We have been in the midst of more tests, more moves, more issues these last months and now the time has come to just call it quits….there is no more money to pour into a lawsuit that is ‘promised to take up to two more years just to really get started. It is promised to cost us more than the house is even worth to fight Ryland, it has now been promised that it will take thousands upon thousands to make the home ‘safe’ according to industry standards, for our particular family...and all that money could be spent in vain because there can be no guarantee that our ‘hypersensitive’ family won’t still get sick there.
We feel that at this time our best choice is just trust a family friend to come in and help us do a few ‘healthy’ upgrades to our A/C system and yet again just put the fate of our family back in this Ryland home (which is ultimately JUST trusting God no matter what....) Here is partly why…we are getting sick everywhere we move now. We are obviously not going to have an easy time of it anywhere at this point. As I sit here typing, I literally have a nose that is leaking like a faucet, a migraine headache, I am tired & I have the itching/scaling rash on my eyes. Many of my family’s symptoms have returned since living out of the town-home. Getting much worse since this last move from upstairs to downstairs. (I scraped an inch or more of sludge out of my A/C closet when we first moved in here...gross…an average family could probably live here and be fine..not the ‘freak show’ Reeves though!) And we are just tanked financially, Ray is working off duty jobs just to pay the bills & sometimes that is just a juggling act of who may not get paid ..yet..we are still committed to paying every bill that has resulted from this nightmare. We just can’t go into any more debt or sink another dime into trying to solve the overall problem from 'out here'..we need to be home and slowly making changes to the home as money allows.
I wake up many days and compare my crazy life to those who are in true poverty not just physical sickness/financial bondage. I think of the statistic that every six seconds a child will die of preventable/treatable things. Those mommas would LOVE a way out, right this minute…many will not see an answer though. There is nothing that makes my family a special case. We do not deserve being rescued any more than millions of others today. Many more families than you know live in Toxic homes or have run from them and there is no ‘safe’ house waiting for them. Many have paid thousands upon thousands with no lawsuit win waiting on them to recoup all the debt. Many people today are homeless and/or jobless..there will be no rescue for them by days end either.
I do not like the state of our dying, decaying, sick world...I do not like having a body that is becoming ever sensitive to everyday things that will always be around me. I don’t like, in fact I hate to think that my son will get sicker than he already is when we move back home… I also don’t like to think of kids with cancer, people starving, children with worms in their bellies and worms in their feet, millions being sold into slavery, kids being tied to beds and left to die because they have ‘aged out’ of the adoption system usually because they have Downs or some other medical need that makes them 'unwanted' & even though my people (Christ-followers) profess pro-life,we are mostly pro-our life and sorta pro-birth (after the baby is here we don't really do anything to help or rescue them, right? Big finger pointing at myself first) …….there are many many MANY MANYthings I do not like…but I can’t blink and make it all ‘ok’ or GO AWAY. There is not always a magic answer or maybe there is and we just aren't willing to see it or make it happen....I don't know.....
For us, like I said in the beginning it is more now about finding our family’s heartbeat…what spurs us on each day…we can’t keep focusing on this toxic nightmare, we can’t keep living in the ‘tempoary’..we need some kind of strong footing again, we need a purpose, a plan…we need to pour our lives into things that matter, forever things….we need to put our focus back on the Someone who we were many many times before delivered TO, He is what gives us our meaning…. I am thinking right now of the verse ‘What does the Lord require?’.. And He tells me in His word that He wants us to Walk HUMBLY, to Love MERCY & Seek JUSTICE…& I am thinking of what I learned this past week in my Mercy Triumphs Bible Study..'A person can live with pain a whole lot easier than they can live with purposelessness'....
When I think of that verse & saying.. I immediately think that if we can’t escape the decay, the dying, the people in need of rescue ALL around us..I think that we have more than enough to do to be the hands n feet of our God and that part of the ‘why’ in us going through so many battles is to SEE what it is like to wish desperately for a deliverance and wonder when one may come..
In our twenty plus years together Ray and I have walked out some pretty crazy times, we have ourselves been desperate many times. I want to be on the end of providing now. I am NOT saying we are going to be well all of a sudden and not have house issues. I am not saying my Aspie kids won’t have wayyyy more needs than I feel qualified to handle, I am not saying eating our way out of ALL this debt won’t be overwhelming. I am just saying we are in between a rock and hard place. We feel there is no other choice but to ‘go home’ AND at the same time I am saying the home will NO LONGER be our everyday all-consuming subject…
There are needs all around us, true needs, marriages falling apart, orphans needing care, kids needing to learn to read or paint or dance, hungry mouths needing to be fed….and on goes the list….WE (the Body of Christ) are supposed to be the one’s living out His redemptive story and helping Him BE the rescue plan for the world. IF that is our focus and we are pouring our lives into others then I believe we will find healing, maybe not the physical kind, maybe we will face way more sorrows as we move home, BUT I want my kids to know that we are living for Something and Someone that is much more important and worthy than what this temporary life is calling us to believe….
Sick houses, toxic houses, they are real…and many are suffering…we will more than likely now live out our lives with insane reactions and illnesses to ‘stuff’( I alone have MCS and just going to the grocery store or my friend's homes with candles burning makes me incredibly sick sometimes). Some of those reactions could be deadly. I can’t pretend to know what will happen as we move back home in a few weeks . I can’t pretend it does not freak me out..big time. I can just walk it out one day at a time…begging God for His kinda peace....one that can’t be explained….
So, that’s kinda it…no real answers..or true smoking gun to say exactly how all the mold spores got where they got (lotsa theories, lotsa possibilities but no 100% guarantee that would get us an easy win)…no BIG great ending to this story...no ‘happily ever after’ has come our way..no million dollar lawsuit and “boy did we showed Ryland” to report…
More questions than we have answers at this point, more fears for my kids as we move home ‘again’, more money spent on a home that may still make us very sick….
Sorry if this is kinda all over the place..I just wanted to get something out there in writing to everyone that’s been asking…
I know what we can use though..PRAYERS and loads of it…we are truly seeking HIS will above ALL, we are open to HIS plans and His purposes…we do not wanna make any mistakes and go even half a degree off His path….we covet your prayers..we want our lives to count & be an offering to Him for all He has done, to point others to the Hope that can only be found in Him…all of this will one day be gone, we want to store up our treasure in Heaven…we want to be found faithful as spouses to one another, as parents to these kids and hopefully more and to be faithful to ‘whatever’ He asks us to do…..loving HIS redemption story in our life and ready for the next chapter..to Him alone be the glory!!!!
LOVE you!
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