Words of Truth

Indiana is in a drought right now. Many other states are as well, but I don’t live there, so I haven’t read their news.  Houses have been catching fire all over the place. There have been grass fires, watering restrictions, and now watering bans.

We’ve been thinking about what would happen if our house caught fire when we were away (like at church or something). We looked at our “things” and thought about what is replaceable and what isn’t. As I look around my house, there are obvious things like my wife’s jewelry and other keepsakes, but the number one thing we determined is irreplaceable is our photo collection.

So today I have decided to do something about that.  I did research a few years ago into companies that digitize your old photos, and they charge through the nose.  I know when my Uncle Danny died in 1996 I had one of my wedding photos of him digitized so we could print out a bigger version, and that process cost me around $75.  I could do that today (with my own scanner/printer and editing software) for less than a dollar (mostly for ink).

This is one of the photos I’ve scanned this morning. Notice the 20 year old in the blue shirt. That’s me the last time I wasn’t fat.

I looked today to see what the cost of this service would be, and one website said you send in your photos in a box, and they will scan all of them for $225.  I figure I could probably get 1000 photos into the box, meaning they would be charging me .23 per photo.  It takes my scanner approximately one minute to scan one photo.  That means that it would take me 17 hours to scan in these 1000 photos.  I’ll do it myself and save the money. I should pay myself the $13.50 per hour to do it, though.

Well, I did it yesterday. I emailed the director of the unit where I worked PRN at 86th street and told her that since they could not provide shifts for me I am turning in my notice. This makes me sad, since it officially ends the six years I worked at the “big house.” How does this practically change my life? It doesn’t. I’m getting all the overtime I need at Carmel right now.

What happens if that overtime disappears, you ask? Well, I’m hoping to start classes at the University of Indianapolis next month, and I won’t be able to work overtime anyway, since I will be pretty busy with school. When I finish that program, I should be able to make about twice what I make now, rendering overtime unnecessary.

Speaking of school, I just finished my “portfolio” for my BSN, which is essentially the entire final class of the program. All that remains is for me to write two one-page papers, and hand everything in on Tuesday. Then I have to participate in my final group project on the 24th, and I’m officially a BSN nurse.

I am still running almost every day and eating right. The weight loss has slowed, but my clothes continue to fit better, so I know I’m losing inches, even if I’m not losing pounds. I’m not sure if the Navy is still an option for me or if I am going to try at all. There have always been two obstacles to me becoming a navy nurse: I didn’t have my BSN and I weighed too much. In two weeks there will only be one obstacle, and we’ll see if that can be fixed.

I don’t know what the future holds, but God does. I know that for now it seems my plan is to enter the nurse practitioner program and complete that. We plan to relist our house in the spring, but we would just be renting a house closer to work and church for a year or so while I finish my master’s degree. Where do we go after that? Do we stay in Indianapolis? Do we move to Iowa? Alaska? Who knows, but I thank God for every day He allows me to live and serve Him.

The sale is off.  The woman who wanted to buy our house signed an agreement two weeks ago to close on July 31^st, which included her paying the earnest money and paying for the appraisal.  After she signed that paper, she left on a trip to darkest Africa.  At least that’s what we assume she did, because nobody has heard from her since then, including her realtor. Our realtor said that we should give her this week, and if she wasn’t able to come up with the earnest money, we should just sign a mutual release form, releasing her from her contractual obligation to buy our house, so long as she pays us the $750 she owes us (the earnest money).  I don’t know if we’ll ever see that, but it would be nice.

So we are taking the house off the market for now.  The plan now is to save up some money in the next six to eight months, replace the carpet, get the major problems (shower, fireplace, garage door) fixed, and then re-list the house in March (or thereabouts).  The hope is that the housing market will have improved and that we can sell our house for more than the current price, given all the repairs and new carpet.

For those of you who were checking your schedule to see what day you were going to help us move, your schedule is now clear.  I hope to now use the next two weeks concentrating on my BSN degree, finishing it on July 24^th. Then it’s state fair time, family camp time, visiting family and friends time, and the start of school (for the kids and hopefully for my NP degree as well).

Stay tuned, sports fans!

I thought about making a separate post for all these things, but then realized that they weren’t long enough individually, so here.

WORK: I’m back on night shift.  But it’s only for three days. You see, they didn’t have any overtime available on days, and the only way I could get any was if I switched to night shift for this week.  Fine, but I’m not going to make a habit of it.  And my PRN position has effectively ended, since they haven’t needed me in weeks, so I don’t qualify to work there anymore. Hopefully I can continue to get overtime at my full-time job, or maybe God will provide so I don’t need OT anymore, right?

WEIGHT: I’ve lost 15 pounds since June 11^th when I again quit eating refined carbohydrates. Then the weight loss plateaued, until Monday. On Sunday July 1^st I decided that I would start running again.  I ran Sunday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.  I’m doing the “run 2 minutes, walk three minutes” (for five reps). So far it’s working, because my weight loss has started again.

NEW HOUSE:  We went to look at several homes for rent this past week. There are three or four we crossed off our list and we currently have three on the list: a house close to where I work, and two townhouses. The townhouses are as follows:

1. A cheaper one that is further away and has grungy carpet and bad appliances.
2. A more expensive one that is equidistant from work and church, and has nicer appliances, better floor plan, nicer neighborhood, a pool, etc.

The house close to where I work is really close. 1.5 miles close.  As in, I could walk to work in 15 minutes. So we saw that one Tuesday. And it was kind of weird, because the current renters are still living there.  Evidently the parents were at work, because the babysitter let us in to look at the house.  We didn’t feel free to talk about the different parts of the house; what we liked and disliked.  We were not able to look at one of the bedrooms because “the baby is sleeping.”  So we still don’t feel like we have a good feel for that place. We are going to look at an apartment complex next Saturday.  Kim says that if we are supposed to move at the end of the month, it’s possible God hasn’t revealed the right place for us because it’s such a great deal that it would get snatched up before we were ready for it.  I hope so.

CURRENT HOUSE:  After seeing the house (or, most of it) on Tuesday, our realtor informed us that our buyer is showing signs of being flaky again.  She hasn’t paid for the home appraisal, so the appraisal hasn’t been done.  The mortgage company won’t lend her the money until after the appraisal.  If she doesn’t get a mortgage, there’s no sale.  She also has still not come up with the earnest money.  We have a contract in place, so there’s no legal way she can walk away without penalty at this point.   The realtor thought we’d be upset by all this, but I told her, “God is still in control.  Everything happens for a reason. We’ve already decided that if this sale doesn’t go through, it’s not the end of the world. We’ll just take the house off the market for a while and then try again.”  

SCHOOL:  I’m three class periods and four assignments away from getting my second bachelor’s degree.  My application (complete with professional references) to the University of Indianapolis’ nurse practitioner program is complete.  I am now waiting for them to process it. Will I start this fall, next spring, or not at all?  I don’t know.  Stay tuned.

I got to thinking about how I don’t like uncertainty.  I have no idea if we are going to be living in our current house a month from today or if we will be living somewhere else. If we move to a new place, where will that be? Where will I be working in a few months? Will I get into nurse practitioner school? What’s my next step if I don’t?  I like planning things out, and right now there are just too many variables for me to feel like I have a handle on how my life is going.  But one thing in my life is certain:  God is not surprised.  He loves me, and He has a plan for my life, which He is working out for my good and His glory.   

If you think about it, the fact that I’m uncertain about X or Y in my life doesn’t really change the reality of it.  We as humans get to where we expect certain aspects of our life to continue as they have in the past unless we change them.  You could say, “I’m going to live in my current house for the next five years, and then we will sell it.”  The truth is, any one of a number of things could happen in your life that would render that statement invalid: fire, tornado, flood, divorce, death, etc, etc.  Do you feel secure in your job, your house, or your relationships?  Realize that these things are fluid and undependable. God is the only universal Constant.