The Call

It's 4:45am as I'm writing this right now, and I have been up for two hours. When I was in 7th grade I got a Matchbox 20 CD for my birthday, and even today I still love the songs from that album whenever I hear them on the radio. I'm not 100% sure who got me that CD back then, but I'm assuming it must have been my cousin Nikki, who at 18, would have been a totally cool teenager to me. I think she may have given me a Ben Harper CD and The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band too. She still sounds pretty cool, am I right?! I can definitely thank her for helping out her awkwardly shy little cousin with some great music education! Okay, so I'm already off track, but it's 4:45 am, forgive me! Point being, I currently have the lyrics, "It's 3 am, I must be lonely" running through my head. Except I'm not lonely, just a little crazy. Crazy with excitement! 

Yesterday we finally got the call. You know... THE CALL! After 4 months of living like vagabonds out of suitcases between a hotel and a temporary vacation rental, we were finally offered a house on base!!!!! Hallelujah and praise The Lord! I could not be more thankful. I literally dissolved in to a stream of inaudible tears when Jordan called to tell me the good news. I was hit with the most giant tsunami wave of relief!

I have been a roller coaster of emotions and anxiety these last few weeks for a few reasons:

1. Our storage of our household goods (HHG) was set to expire on the 19th of this month and therefore was going to be transitioned to a commercial storage facility at an exorbitant rate. Although surprisingly, the cost itself wasn't my biggest worry; once your HHG is moved to commercial storage the military movers are no longer liable for any damages incurred to your property. Based on previous moving experiences, horror stories we have heard from others, and the fact that after transit on a boat and 4 months in storage our stuff could very well be mold-infested, I was freaking out! I could not even imagine how devastating it could be, both financially and emotionally. Add to the fact that despite faxing, calling, emailing and attempting to go in person, our travel management office representative continued to ignore the appropriate submitted documents for our requested extension.  To say I was frustrated and stressed out is an understatement.

2. As per our original verbal discussion with the landlord, our month-to-month lease was set to expire on September 15th. However, a week ago she informed me that the property was in fact rented starting the beginning of September, and our last day here would therefore be the 31st of August! Unfortunately, there were no specified dates in our lease to reference back to, just the month-to-month terms. I just lost two whole weeks of time I thought we had! Again, frustration, ugh!

3. As of last Friday, we were still number 42 on the almighty wait list. However, we were assured that we would probably get an offer within the next month, as many of the people on the list ahead of us were in year long leases and that they would not be able to break those to accept the offer. Good news, but it didn't necessarily help with situation 1 and 2 above!

4. Jordan leaves soon for Japan for two weeks!!!! Now I'm not playing the incapable, immature woman card, woe is me, but when dealing with the military (storage extensions, moving on base, etc.) there are certain aspects and offices that only the service member has access to, or at least easier or preferred access to! Even a Power of Attorney has proved helpless in all my attempts dealing with the travel management office and our storage extension. Perhaps, and most likely, this is due to understaffing and not blatant snubbing; however, a service member in uniform entering any establishment on base always gets front of the line privledges. And as they should! However, when you are up against the clock, with your storage expiring and the domino effect of complications that is therefore about to ensue, it can be extremely frustrating. And even then, despite Jordan's actual physical presence here now, the guys don't exactly have free time during business hours to deal with hours of paperwork and ping-ponging amongst the maze of different departments that each one inevitably sends you to! Ugh! I'm annoyed now just thinking about it again!

Thankfully, Jordan finally found time in his hectic schedule to visit the travel management office to confront the storage extension issue. Being able to easily get right in and speak with someone directly, unlike my experience of course, they sent him over to the base housing office to get a letter with our projected offer and move in date (although this was never mentioned previously as required documentation before, UGH). So off ping-ponging he went to the next office! Upon arriving at base housing and informing them of our storage situation and lease deadline, the office assured us we were projected to have an offer by the end of the week and a move in of beginning of September. This was news enough to bring on the flood of tears! And wouldn't you know it but it was only a few hours later we were offered a house with an Aug 18th (!!!!) availability date for move in! Thank God! 

And I mean thank God in all faithfulness and sincerity and not just as a mindless, over-used phrase. Despite a week or more of tossing and turning with stress and worry, Sunday night I found myself surprisingly and overwhelmingly at a state of peace. For the first time in over a week I was overcome with an indescribe calmness before I went to bed and actually slept well! (Sleep, it's one of those things you take for granted until it inexplicably evades you!) I attribute this calm to a few things that coincided with one another earlier that day:

1. A reminder of one of my favorite bible verses, " Don't worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done" Philipeans 4:6. 

2.  This bombardment of FB posts from people/sites that I follow: 

See FB isn't ALL bad! This last one really hit me. If God loves us so much he sent Jesus to die for us, don't you think he loves us enough to help us with everything else? Suddenly I felt like it was okay to pray about our situation, something normally I would have considered too selfish or petty. The next day our prayers were literally answered. Not only that, but we were also so blessed to be offered a house on what is considered the best street on the base, with the majority of the houses having a view of at least one of the two beaches on base. So amazing and so unbelievably grateful! 

So here it is, our future "permanent" home for the next 3-4 years! I'm SO ready to be settled in one spot for longer than 6 months and to put down roots...quite literally, because those shrubs in the front will need to go!

Our house is actually right next door to my friend Brittney's, who I have previously mentioned a few times. We first met in Virginia and reunited here in Hawaii. Unfortunately, her and her husband moved at the end of June to their next duty stations. Although our times only overlapped for a short period of time and we didn't end up being neighbors afterall, we were thankful for our time together and for them showing us the ropes (and a couple of great hikes) here in Hawaii!

The best part... This is the view from our driveway!

And of course the reason I have been up since 2:30 am...I have been pinteresting ideas for decoration inspiration for our new home! Paint, curtains, the works! I could care less about patching holes or repainting later on! Finally, we have longer than 6 months to nest!!!!!!!! This little bird is beyond happy!