Answered Prayers

We have all been praying that something would work out for us to buy a home.  My husband and I both felt rather hopeless because nothing has been working out.  We have been living with family for over a year and have had our things in storage for just as long.  It has been discouraging, but we kept praying.  Then last night something happened.

Every night my husband and I read scriptures together.  Last night while reading scriptures at 1 in the morning, I reached over and touched his hand.  Upon touching his hand, I immediately felt a rush of happiness go shooting up my arm, to my heart and throughout the rest of my body.  Then about a minute later I had another feeling of energy rush through me from head to toe like a bolt of lighting.  With this came the clear thought into my head, "You have the money to pay for a years worth of renting.  Rent instead of buy."  I also had the thought with it that we would have better income by then to qualify for a higher loan than we are now, which means getting a nicer house that won't have to be totally renovated. 

I had it in my mind for so long that we can't afford to rent.  But because of the car accident settlement, as small as our portion ended up being, we can rent a home.  I was so excited and so happy.  I had a difficult time going to sleep.  I wanted to shout from the rooftops that God had answered my pleas!  God listened and answered!  What an incredible feeling that was.  I went into the bathroom and cried as I thanked Heavenly Father a couple dozen times.  (was too embarrassed to let my husband see so that is why I went into the bathroom lol)

Today I have felt happy and excited and grateful.  Instead of waiting months and months to see if we would get the short sale house that would take a few thousand to fix up, we could be moving into a place in the next couple weeks.  God is good.  All the time.

A Day at the Beach

So often I resent memories.  There are so many bad memories that often flood my mind that it is hard to think of memories as a good thing.  But today we took a trip to the city where I lived when I was little.  Where I lived on the same road as my Grandpa, Grandma, Great Aunt, Uncle and Aunt.  From my Grandpa's old house you can go down to the beach on the inlet. 

It was great to get to show my husband and kids where I used to live and all the houses where relatives used to live.  Even the house my dad lived in as a kid is still there (pretty run down and looks abandoned, but it's still there).  While walking on the beach I was flooded with so many good memories. 

I remember one time we were on the beach with all the family.  The beach isn't a sandy one.  It is filled with rocks, shells and barnacles.  I was quite young (maybe 3 or 4) and I tripped on a rock and fell.  I fell onto rocks covered in barnacles, which scraped up my bare legs.  I started crying.  My grandma asked me what was wrong and I told her that the barnacles bit me.  She gave me a hug and helped me up the hill to her house where she cleaned up the cuts and bandaged me up. 

On the drive down the road, I had memory after memory come into my mind.  I saw the old cherry tee that my friend and I used to climb up to sit in, eat cherries and talk.  I saw the pine tree that I climbed when I was little that got sap in my hair.  It was so hard to get out that my mom had to cut a patch of my hair all the way down to my scalp.  I could still see my siblings and I riding our bikes to the mail boxes to get our grandparent's mail and then ride it down to their house to give it to them.  Then in return our grandma would give us homemade ice cream or cookies.  Sometimes she would give me her home canned prunes, which were my favorite.

After today I am happy to have memories.  Some memories may be sad or upsetting, but the happy memories are able to overpower the bad memories if we let them.