Crazy February! ~

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So, what has been going on with us? Well...

When you are faced with your entire life being ripped out from under you, through no choice of your own, you are left with trying to start over, but not having any ability to be free to try out anything you like.

My goal is as it always was. To remain true to my vows and commitments I have made. I was always faithful to my husband, though he was repeatedly unfaithful to me. I willingly remarried him, on his word he had changed. Even when he refused to work things out with me, not telling me why, I remained true, despite the mounting evidence that he was again living a lie and hiding his life from me.

I also intend to be the best stay at home mother and homeschooling mom I can be. It's what I said I would do and I'm going to do my best to uphold that.

My husband does not honor my commitment to hold true to vows, either to him or to our children. Not only has he left us, but he was supposed to care for me my whole life. I had no plans or ability to support myself, gain any retirement, he promised to care for me. Yet, here I am again. And he would like nothing better than to not have to support me at all. He certainly has no plans to care for me in my old age, but would leave me destitute, while he uses my half of our work together, his ability to earn cash, for his own purposes while I fend for myself.

That being said, I was working on a few things over the last few months that I hoped my turn into long-term income for me. However, in order to make money, you have to have money. At least some extra beyond your basic living expenses. Now, not only was I not getting basic expenses any longer, but I was getting nothing. Needless to say, the things I had been working on, went kaput! Now we were in survival mode.

Even Michael spent hours a day looking for ways to contribute. He came up with many ideas for income and we opened an ETSY account for him. Well, we tried. We found that you have to 18. So it's under me, but he spent all week collecting cedar shavings, cutting scraps of fabric, and tying them into masculine themed drawer sachets.






We also drug out the old window washing equipment we bought for one of our sons and busily began covering old phone numbers with new on business cards and polo shirts.







We got one job. We are still doing this window washing job every Sunday afternoon or morning, before or after church. We are so busy and running all over the place, that this seemed to be the best time. We actually live about 1/2 hour from town, so we have to combine all our trips and they usually take a lot of time.

We remained very active in sewing and planning of our Civil War Spring Ball that was to come at the end of March. So I did a lot of attempting to sew during this time, but we did not do a lot of work around the farm. I didn't do much baking, we ate only the barest of necessities, we turned the thermostat down to 62 degrees, quit using hot water except for a shallow bath when necessary. We really had to scrunch down. In March, we began to get a little income again, but it was reduced.

I had no money to divorce my husband, until my parents paid for me to hire a lawyer. That is in the works right now. I hope to have some financial protection soon.

We always try to remain as active in the home schooling group as we can, though we cannot do all the things we did before. Time constraints as we have to find ways to supplement our income as well as take care of the farm alone and with equipment breaking down it takes longer. We do our best to find ways to be of help to others, so when something comes up, we try to be there. Michael's sports have disappeared from his life. No money and no time for them. He has had to give up a lot because of his father's decision to leave us. But He does remarkably well. We have a happy home, nearly completely free of anger and negative emotions, and we both trust in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to care for us, even when we are left by those who vowed to be there til death.

If you've been given the bitter drink of betrayal and abandonment, do not be surprised. Evil exists all around in this world. God did not cause it to happen, it was a human's choice to seek pleasing only themselves.

God replaces what evil the world dishes out with good, to those who love and serve Him. It may look different than we expected, it may be later than we were stamping our feet for. But He is faithful. He never breaks a promise.

Oh, and I remembered why I went with the Flock browser. Flock is incredibly slow, but it has a great widget for dragging and dropping all my pics quickly! YAY!

Cared for, even in the midst of difficulties,

Faith

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