Old habits are hard to break

        So I have to be completely honest, Jason and I have been struggling a little bit....ok we hit a wall in the past few weeks in our progress, but we're back on track. The truth is, when he came here and we were reunited and in the eye of the miracle we had a super strength motivation behind us. We knew there was a lot of hard work to be done and we were ready to face all of it, head on, to save our family, better ourselves, and take the leap of faith that God had called for us. 

We have accomplished SO much already.

Jason was blessed with a job about a month after we got here and had the opportunity to do some side work in the mean time. We've received the amazing opportunity to share our story through our church and through my writing to give others hope in the way God is working through us. Our family has the gift of staying with another family full of grace, encouragement, and wisdom. An amazing amount of very gracious people have helped us with monetary support, I can't tell you how thankful we are for that. We also are able to join various groups in the church, together and separately, that are a great way for us to meet other parents and married couples. These are just a few of the blessings that we have received. 

HE IS SO GOOD! 

I'm can't express how grateful I am, but it still hasn't been easy. I would be lying if I said that we haven't wanted to pack it up and go home. The fears and worries we have are overwhelming at times. It is no surprise to me that our pastor has been talking a lot about Abraham and his obedience the past few Sundays. We miss our family and friends to a point that it's painful. We miss the people that we don't have to explain our actions or feelings to because they've known us for our whole life. We are social people and not knowing many people well has been hard especially being from a small town were you know exactly who to trust and who not to. Right now God has put us in a position to be surrounded by trustworthy people and I'm so thankful for that. 

This is just a new way of living for us here, everything is different than we we're used to. And there are so many road blocks financially that it makes it hard to focus on any other issue like, I don't know, our marriage. I'm sure just a few of you can relate.

The good news with that is we had a meeting yesterday at Dave Ramsey's office because we were accepted by they're ministry program to get some coaching. (Another amazing blessing)

We really just want to find a light at the end of the tunnel,  but it's hard to see at times when it seems so far off.  And we are scared and I'm trying very, VERY hard not to be but we have never dealt with so much at once and this is really hard and a lot of transition. We have gone through many rough times, but we never faced our problems. We used to let them build up to an eruption of horrible fighting about everything that had bothered us in the last month or so. 

I am happy to say that we have realized that we both just need to dig deeper within ourselves and together and seek harder, love more and remain strong in our faith in God's plan for us. Starting over at square one is really hard, but at least we will do it right this time. Our actions and the basis of our decisions before Christ became our sole influence had everything to do with how we fell apart. We wanted to blame every thing else for our mistakes but ourselves. We'd point the finger at our childhoods, or our lack of money, or a bottle, but never at our own choices. It ironically parallels with a story that is the root of the name of this site.

One of our favorite things to do together is fishing. On a sunny, July day in the summer of 2003, Jason and I had decided to spend the afternoon fishing. After about five hours in a little roe boat we had a full stringer of pan fish that we intended on eating for dinner that night. Out of nowhere, and I mean nowhere, the sky became black and the wind kicked up, strong enough to bow the trees that surround our little fishing hole. Rain began to pour so hard we couldn't tell if the water was coming from the sky or raising from the pond. We could see nothing. We where blinded. We started to row to the shore but the wind seemed to be rushing at us to hard to get anywhere. This struggle went on for about 45 min before......

We noticed that we hadn't pulled the anchor up!  

And then the real icing on the cake was that once Tweedle Dee and I got to shore (two minutes after pulling up the anchor) the entire stringer of fish had come untied from the boat in the chaos. Soaking wet, without dinner, there was nothing else to do but stand on the edge of that pond and laugh and embrace the story that we'd have to tell. 

The catch is that there is a much deeper meaning to that story that we now embrace, but we wish hadn't taken us so long to get. We were so so busy blaming the wind and rain of the storm that we couldn't see our own selves holding us back. Thus the innocent storm.

There is no more blaming of our past, and there is no circumstance of the present that will keep us from fighting the good fight. Our eyes are as open as our arms and we own our mistakes without excuse. We are learning from our mistakes and continuing down this beautiful path that God has given us no matter how hard it gets, we'll make it.

Blessings to you,

Candice