COVID-19. I wonder if my descendants will wonder someday what it was like for the world and specifically our family when they hear about the coronavirus. It has created a very new normal/abnormal for many people, and it will take us a very long time to recover from all of it.
For John and me, the advent of COVID-19 coincided exactly with our lives turning around. In January, after 14 long months of not having a job, John began working in PA, pulling call on weekends. Then, in the beginning of February, he started a new job in Dearborn, working for the OB/Gyn residency at Beaumont.
This was after 14 months of not working. Our last pay check had come in September of 2019, so we had been without a pay check for four solid months. We had about $40,000 in savings, but it was gone by the end of November.
Because we had a short sale on our PA house in 2018, and he hadn't been the requisite two years since in order to clear our record, nobody would give us a mortgage....except one lender, and that lender dragged out the experience for over five months. The initial requirement was that John needed two paycheck stubs, and then we could sign on the house. Well, he had those by the end of January, but the lender still wouldn't give us the house. John basically wrote out his entire life story and submitted every piece of paperwork about his hearing, past jobs, and his character that he had in order to convince the lender that we were a good bet. It came down to the seller threatening us with just five more days to buy the house or they were resisting it (they did end up relisting it). We had to give them $5,000 to convince them that we were doing everything we could to buy the house. I do believe that if it hadn't been for COVID-19 and the danger on the horizon of the economy tanking, we would have not been able to sign on the house and would have lost it. (Of course, they probably wouldn't have been able to sell it, because nobody is buying houses right now....)
March 16, 2020. The stay-at-home/shelter-in-place order hadn't been enacted yet by our governor, but the fear of the virus was definitely spreading. However, the movers showed up bright and early at our apartment in Ann Arbor to pack our few things there. We had been in the apartment since June, and as I was made aware each day, we never thought we would be there that long judging by the fact that I had no winter clothes except what I had bought in recent months. When we showed up to sign on our house, the women working for the title agency were wearing gloves (although realtor was still using her bare hands to open doors and do anything else). I could sense there was some tension in the air--I think our realtor was probably worried about us backing out right before the signing because of the predicted downturn in the economy. We signed on the house and drove over to the house to drop off the cats.
Anyway, I stayed at the house, waiting for the guys to come with our apartment stuff, and I just wandered around, in awe, that it was finally ours.
What a relief to have professional movers! Even professional piano movers! Years of us moving our stuff in and out of houses, and they were done by 2:00. And we realized that we hated the dark red color of the wood floors, so we called our flooring guy who came over immediately and showed up two days later to change the color in three separate rooms. His wife later texted me, thanking me for giving her husband work, because with corona virus, his jobs had all been canceled.
This has been such a long trial. We originally listed our PA house in 2015, and we went through all the pains of it not selling for three long years. We moved without it selling. The house we bought in Dexter was fine, but it never fit our family...or our furniture! We finally sold it in 2018 and lost over $150,000 on it. Six months later, John lost his job.
John's mom, Kathy, is a visionary person. In fact, several of her children are as well. When she was praying for John after he lost his hearing (June 2019), and as she was questioning God and why he didn't answer her prayers (which he does nearly 100% of the time), she heard a distinct voice in her head that said, "I can take this away from him, but he won't learn what I want him to learn." She cried as she recounted this story.
This trial has been five years long. Five of the most miserable years I've lived. It was over five years ago that I was sitting in the Provo temple parking lot, and I too heard a voice that said, "You need to convince John to move." Do you know how many times I have questioned that prompting? Too many times, it has seemed that it would have been much easier to just stay in PA, in our home, but now that I am sitting in a home that I love even more, and when I reflect on some of the other things I have learned along the way and the experiences I have been given, I can't deny that the Lord's hand has been in all of this. I want to enumerate those blessings because I want the Lord to see that I recognize what has come from all of this:
1. Chelsea ward was a gift for me. I had more friends in that ward than I have ever had, but it wasn't because of the people. It was because of me. I had a fresh start with no prejudices or preconceived notions from others. I reached out to anyone and everyone from day one, offering to help, to be a friend, and smiling the entire time. I was given a calling in Chelsea that I was denied several times in PA (trust me, I know, because John sat in on some of the ward councils where my name was tossed around....and then dropped). While the people in PA wouldn't give me the chance to serve in YW with my girls, the people in Chelsea trusted me with theirs. It was such a blessing.
2. We thought we would be in "La Maison" until we died, but how thankful I am that we won't be. It was undeniably the best house we could find at the time, but it just didn't fit us. There weren't enough bedrooms or bathrooms, and it felt like half of our furniture was stored out in the barn. There was no internet cable out to our house so internet service came s.l.o.w.l.y. through satellite which drove us all crazy. And the dirt road to the house? John has seriously been cleaning out our car engines over the past month, and they are FULL of mouse nests and mud. So much mud.
We gave up land when we bought "La Casa Fiesta" but we just don't care anymore. Plus, having to take the dogs for walks everyday gets ME out of the house, so it's a win/win. And now that I seemed to have mastered being friendly with people, I'm working on having good neighbors. In fact, two days after we had moved in, I saw a moving truck down the road. I packed up a basket of goodies (whatever I had unwrapped in the house) including homemade pumpkin bread, and walked it down to Jason and Kaitrin Kramer. We are now texting friends, and I seriously love it. And for the record, that's one more neighbor friend than we had in Dexter, and we haven't yet met any of the nasty kind of neighbors we had in Dexter, thank goodness!
3. We are getting out of debt. Selling the house for a loss in PA made us reevaluate our finances. We had almost no money in retirement (of course, we've lost a lot of that now thanks to COVID-19 and its effect on the economy), and we were drowning in debt. Paying for four kids' college tuitions was difficult (although we will NEVER regret helping them), but we needed help. We are now in credit counseling which means that all of our credit cards are destroyed (but one, and good for John for keeping it because it was all that kept us alive when our savings ran out) and we are on a payment plan to pay off everything. Like over $100,000 in debt before we even sold the house. It is so freeing, but I don't know that we would have done this if we hadn't sold the house. We pay for everything with cash now, and we can pay all of our bills. Yes, we haven't done much traveling for a long while, but it will happen again.
4. John's paycheck. There was over a year where we weren't sure John would ever work again. He actually told me that he would go work for Auto Zone if nothing else. We thought we had found THE perfect job in Chelsea, but looking back on it now, it was the WORST job John has ever had. I wish John hadn't had to go through what he did to find a new job, but it forced us to do what was best for us. Not only does John have a paycheck now at a job that he says is the best job he's ever had, but it's for the same amount money he was making in Chelsea AND he still has the job in PA. We take that money and pay off more of our debt, and when that's done, everything he makes there will go straight into retirement. Plus, Geisinger is putting money into retirement for him as well! If the Geisinger job eventually dries up, John has moonlighting opportunities here in Michigan that will kick in in a couple of months, and with his easy-peasy schedule at his job, it won't be difficult at all to pull some extra hours. So, as John puts it, we didn't think this job would pay that much, but it looks like it was the best option of all!
5. Leaving Altoona OB/Gyn. When John lost his job here, we figured we could go back to PA to work, and believe me, the doctors there wanted him to come back. As we made plans for that though, there just wasn't anything that really worked. Going back to that stake and possibly the same ward was terrifying for both of us, and the house prices in Happy Valley are astronomical. Plus, John called the higher ups at Altoona hospital (now owned by UPMC), and the administrator there told him he wasn't needed (which was very surprising news to John's former colleagues...and probably should have been an omen to them of things to come). We started to regret ever selling our house. But this past week, John called Dr. Lee in Altoona and asked him how things are going. As it turns out, UPMC has taken over most of the clinics that Altoona OB/Gyn served, leaving them with almost no net gain, if any. It's only a matter of time before they need to fold.
So let's circle back to that initial prompting I had, five years ago, that I needed to convince John to move.
If we had stayed in PA, we would now be bankrupt, unable to sell our house, with no job.
But instead, for the past month, we have been living our best lives. The family has been home, John loves going to work, we are paying off debt, and we are staying where we want to live (in Michigan, close to the temple).
For all of the blog posts where I asked where God was, and how could he expect my faith to extend for such a long time, I now testify and give all credit to Him that He had a plan for us. It felt like too much at times, but he supported us along the way, and now we are on the other side, able to see His hand in our lives. As I told Hannah the other day, I'm not sure why we couldn't sell our PA house faster, but I trust there is a reason I can't see. I guess if anything, it forced us to get control of our spending and our finances which I'm not sure we would have done otherwise.
I can't really announce it to the world all of the happiness that we are now experiencing when so many are suffering. It's sad because I really would like to bear testimony of it all, but it will have to wait. And if nothing else, our family and close friends know what we have gone through and what we have now--they have been with us every step of the way. And a shout out to our kids. They have heard the bad news and felt the worry about our future. They have shouldered way too many of our fears, and it pains me to hear them recount some of them now, but a literal "thank God" for my children. I couldn't have done it without them.
So with all of the people who are losing their jobs at this time, I feel for them. I know what it's like to wake up in the morning and feel the weight of that horror on my shoulders. I know the stress and the worry. I know what it's like to not eat for days, and I know what it's like to gain 30 pounds from the stress as well. I know what it's like to do everything to try and feel God in my life, and to get down on my knees and beg for mercy. As much as I hate to say it, we need these moments, because when we get through them, we can do nothing more than give Him all credit for helping us along the way.
For John and me, the advent of COVID-19 coincided exactly with our lives turning around. In January, after 14 long months of not having a job, John began working in PA, pulling call on weekends. Then, in the beginning of February, he started a new job in Dearborn, working for the OB/Gyn residency at Beaumont.
This was after 14 months of not working. Our last pay check had come in September of 2019, so we had been without a pay check for four solid months. We had about $40,000 in savings, but it was gone by the end of November.
Because we had a short sale on our PA house in 2018, and he hadn't been the requisite two years since in order to clear our record, nobody would give us a mortgage....except one lender, and that lender dragged out the experience for over five months. The initial requirement was that John needed two paycheck stubs, and then we could sign on the house. Well, he had those by the end of January, but the lender still wouldn't give us the house. John basically wrote out his entire life story and submitted every piece of paperwork about his hearing, past jobs, and his character that he had in order to convince the lender that we were a good bet. It came down to the seller threatening us with just five more days to buy the house or they were resisting it (they did end up relisting it). We had to give them $5,000 to convince them that we were doing everything we could to buy the house. I do believe that if it hadn't been for COVID-19 and the danger on the horizon of the economy tanking, we would have not been able to sign on the house and would have lost it. (Of course, they probably wouldn't have been able to sell it, because nobody is buying houses right now....)
March 16, 2020. The stay-at-home/shelter-in-place order hadn't been enacted yet by our governor, but the fear of the virus was definitely spreading. However, the movers showed up bright and early at our apartment in Ann Arbor to pack our few things there. We had been in the apartment since June, and as I was made aware each day, we never thought we would be there that long judging by the fact that I had no winter clothes except what I had bought in recent months. When we showed up to sign on our house, the women working for the title agency were wearing gloves (although realtor was still using her bare hands to open doors and do anything else). I could sense there was some tension in the air--I think our realtor was probably worried about us backing out right before the signing because of the predicted downturn in the economy. We signed on the house and drove over to the house to drop off the cats.
 |
| No joke, I had this in my purse at the signing. |
Our house is beyond beautiful. John believes it's even nicer than our PA house, and I think I would agree. The original owners bought/built it in back in 2003, and paid almost the exact same amount we were paying for it. Since they bought it, they had finished the basement, installed a dance floor, an indoor grill, Trex decking, a sauna, a pool, and a whole heck-of-a-lot of stamped concrete in the backyard. They had originally listed it at $1.1 million, but after a year and a half, had lowered it by over 30%....back to the original price they paid. We felt for them--we had been in nearly the same situation with our PA house, and we know how painful it is to lose so much money on a house. In fact, they didn't even show up for our house signing. We had wanted to tell them how much we love their house, but they came earlier in the morning and signed away what they needed to. It's sad.
Anyway, I stayed at the house, waiting for the guys to come with our apartment stuff, and I just wandered around, in awe, that it was finally ours.
What a relief to have professional movers! Even professional piano movers! Years of us moving our stuff in and out of houses, and they were done by 2:00. And we realized that we hated the dark red color of the wood floors, so we called our flooring guy who came over immediately and showed up two days later to change the color in three separate rooms. His wife later texted me, thanking me for giving her husband work, because with corona virus, his jobs had all been canceled.
This has been such a long trial. We originally listed our PA house in 2015, and we went through all the pains of it not selling for three long years. We moved without it selling. The house we bought in Dexter was fine, but it never fit our family...or our furniture! We finally sold it in 2018 and lost over $150,000 on it. Six months later, John lost his job.
John's mom, Kathy, is a visionary person. In fact, several of her children are as well. When she was praying for John after he lost his hearing (June 2019), and as she was questioning God and why he didn't answer her prayers (which he does nearly 100% of the time), she heard a distinct voice in her head that said, "I can take this away from him, but he won't learn what I want him to learn." She cried as she recounted this story.
This trial has been five years long. Five of the most miserable years I've lived. It was over five years ago that I was sitting in the Provo temple parking lot, and I too heard a voice that said, "You need to convince John to move." Do you know how many times I have questioned that prompting? Too many times, it has seemed that it would have been much easier to just stay in PA, in our home, but now that I am sitting in a home that I love even more, and when I reflect on some of the other things I have learned along the way and the experiences I have been given, I can't deny that the Lord's hand has been in all of this. I want to enumerate those blessings because I want the Lord to see that I recognize what has come from all of this:
1. Chelsea ward was a gift for me. I had more friends in that ward than I have ever had, but it wasn't because of the people. It was because of me. I had a fresh start with no prejudices or preconceived notions from others. I reached out to anyone and everyone from day one, offering to help, to be a friend, and smiling the entire time. I was given a calling in Chelsea that I was denied several times in PA (trust me, I know, because John sat in on some of the ward councils where my name was tossed around....and then dropped). While the people in PA wouldn't give me the chance to serve in YW with my girls, the people in Chelsea trusted me with theirs. It was such a blessing.
2. We thought we would be in "La Maison" until we died, but how thankful I am that we won't be. It was undeniably the best house we could find at the time, but it just didn't fit us. There weren't enough bedrooms or bathrooms, and it felt like half of our furniture was stored out in the barn. There was no internet cable out to our house so internet service came s.l.o.w.l.y. through satellite which drove us all crazy. And the dirt road to the house? John has seriously been cleaning out our car engines over the past month, and they are FULL of mouse nests and mud. So much mud.
We gave up land when we bought "La Casa Fiesta" but we just don't care anymore. Plus, having to take the dogs for walks everyday gets ME out of the house, so it's a win/win. And now that I seemed to have mastered being friendly with people, I'm working on having good neighbors. In fact, two days after we had moved in, I saw a moving truck down the road. I packed up a basket of goodies (whatever I had unwrapped in the house) including homemade pumpkin bread, and walked it down to Jason and Kaitrin Kramer. We are now texting friends, and I seriously love it. And for the record, that's one more neighbor friend than we had in Dexter, and we haven't yet met any of the nasty kind of neighbors we had in Dexter, thank goodness!
3. We are getting out of debt. Selling the house for a loss in PA made us reevaluate our finances. We had almost no money in retirement (of course, we've lost a lot of that now thanks to COVID-19 and its effect on the economy), and we were drowning in debt. Paying for four kids' college tuitions was difficult (although we will NEVER regret helping them), but we needed help. We are now in credit counseling which means that all of our credit cards are destroyed (but one, and good for John for keeping it because it was all that kept us alive when our savings ran out) and we are on a payment plan to pay off everything. Like over $100,000 in debt before we even sold the house. It is so freeing, but I don't know that we would have done this if we hadn't sold the house. We pay for everything with cash now, and we can pay all of our bills. Yes, we haven't done much traveling for a long while, but it will happen again.
4. John's paycheck. There was over a year where we weren't sure John would ever work again. He actually told me that he would go work for Auto Zone if nothing else. We thought we had found THE perfect job in Chelsea, but looking back on it now, it was the WORST job John has ever had. I wish John hadn't had to go through what he did to find a new job, but it forced us to do what was best for us. Not only does John have a paycheck now at a job that he says is the best job he's ever had, but it's for the same amount money he was making in Chelsea AND he still has the job in PA. We take that money and pay off more of our debt, and when that's done, everything he makes there will go straight into retirement. Plus, Geisinger is putting money into retirement for him as well! If the Geisinger job eventually dries up, John has moonlighting opportunities here in Michigan that will kick in in a couple of months, and with his easy-peasy schedule at his job, it won't be difficult at all to pull some extra hours. So, as John puts it, we didn't think this job would pay that much, but it looks like it was the best option of all!
5. Leaving Altoona OB/Gyn. When John lost his job here, we figured we could go back to PA to work, and believe me, the doctors there wanted him to come back. As we made plans for that though, there just wasn't anything that really worked. Going back to that stake and possibly the same ward was terrifying for both of us, and the house prices in Happy Valley are astronomical. Plus, John called the higher ups at Altoona hospital (now owned by UPMC), and the administrator there told him he wasn't needed (which was very surprising news to John's former colleagues...and probably should have been an omen to them of things to come). We started to regret ever selling our house. But this past week, John called Dr. Lee in Altoona and asked him how things are going. As it turns out, UPMC has taken over most of the clinics that Altoona OB/Gyn served, leaving them with almost no net gain, if any. It's only a matter of time before they need to fold.
So let's circle back to that initial prompting I had, five years ago, that I needed to convince John to move.
If we had stayed in PA, we would now be bankrupt, unable to sell our house, with no job.
But instead, for the past month, we have been living our best lives. The family has been home, John loves going to work, we are paying off debt, and we are staying where we want to live (in Michigan, close to the temple).
For all of the blog posts where I asked where God was, and how could he expect my faith to extend for such a long time, I now testify and give all credit to Him that He had a plan for us. It felt like too much at times, but he supported us along the way, and now we are on the other side, able to see His hand in our lives. As I told Hannah the other day, I'm not sure why we couldn't sell our PA house faster, but I trust there is a reason I can't see. I guess if anything, it forced us to get control of our spending and our finances which I'm not sure we would have done otherwise.
I can't really announce it to the world all of the happiness that we are now experiencing when so many are suffering. It's sad because I really would like to bear testimony of it all, but it will have to wait. And if nothing else, our family and close friends know what we have gone through and what we have now--they have been with us every step of the way. And a shout out to our kids. They have heard the bad news and felt the worry about our future. They have shouldered way too many of our fears, and it pains me to hear them recount some of them now, but a literal "thank God" for my children. I couldn't have done it without them.
So with all of the people who are losing their jobs at this time, I feel for them. I know what it's like to wake up in the morning and feel the weight of that horror on my shoulders. I know the stress and the worry. I know what it's like to not eat for days, and I know what it's like to gain 30 pounds from the stress as well. I know what it's like to do everything to try and feel God in my life, and to get down on my knees and beg for mercy. As much as I hate to say it, we need these moments, because when we get through them, we can do nothing more than give Him all credit for helping us along the way.
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