5 Years Ago

Today we close on our house. We will be planning the move starting next week. Next Thursday the people should be completely out and we will be putting up ceiling fans and having the carpets cleaned. Friday we will have the furniture delivered and try to have everything over to the new house. Saturday and Sunday I hope to have the Kitchen our room and Ean's room completely unpacked. That same Saturday we are having a small family reunion for Jim's family so we will be going to that too. This is a tight schedule but, I really want to get in and get done before the little one arrives AND my fear is that if we don't get in and unpacked things will pile up and we WON'T get things unpacked.

The title of this post is five years ago because five years ago this month Jim was starting his medication. What would be a year of hell for him and the most trying time we would have together so far.

We were together only six months when he started taking the Interferon. He had to take 5 pills a day that made him sick and I had to give him three shots a week in the tummy that made him so sick he couldn't get out of bed sometimes.

He tried to keep working which we were told some people do but driving a truck was just too much for him. At that time he was driving to LA and back, about 450-550 miles per day. The day he quit he had gone to work, got his truck hooked up and drove to Tulare, by the time he got to Tulare (10 miles) he had to take a nap, then he drove to Bakersfield (65 miles) and had to take another nap. The whole day went like this and what would have normally been an 8-10 hour day took him over 20 hours. After that day he realized he was not going to be able to keep working.

He spent most of the year in bed. The medicine, if you are not familiar is like Chemotherapy, it kills that bad stuff inside of you which in turn makes you weak and tired and makes you lose weight. A lot of people get so depressed they try to commit suicide, so the doctor put Jim on anti-depressants which made him puke everyday. We would be sitting eating dinner and he would get up and run and not come back. He was in bed so much that it became a habit we had to break because we would automatically go to our room and go to bed when we got home. All this, and I was learning to be a step mom to two teenage boys and run a household.

It was very hard for all of us and we were very broke since I was the only one working. When he started the medicine he had a T-Bird which had a $300/mth payment and he had to get rid of it because he couldn't afford it. The only bill we had was the house payment and that was a struggle to make sometimes. We drove my car that I had had in high school and did without a lot. That same year our AC went out and thank Goodness for my mom and Great Aunt because we certainly couldn't have gotten a new one without their help. We both had credit problems that were fairly recent so we couldn't get ANYTHING on credit which was probably a blessing as it taught us both how to manage.

Looking back there are a few things that stick out in my mind to remind me where we have been, but for the most part I forget the bad stuff. Jim says he doesn't remember how terrible it was other than not being able to get out of bed. It is amazing the bond Jim and I had from the very beginning and I know that we can make it through anything because we made it through that first year. Some relationships are built on "things", but our relationship was built on "no things" it was built on eachother and I wouldn't want it any other way.

To think that today we are going to close on a $400,000 home, which will be our third piece of property we currently own, when five years ago we couldn't have bought a couch is just a blessing. We can do anything we want now and have learned to use CASH instead of credit. That is powerful knowledge and an education that wasn't cheap to come by.

I tell people that I meet that are going through hard times or have to do a lot of work to be able to buy a house two things:

1) Everything happens for a reason- whatever happens in life, good or bad is preparing us for our furture life and makes us who we are.

2) Nothing good comes easy- anything worth having has to be worked at.

I feel like we have been taught those two things and although we are a lifetime away from where we were it has really only been five years.

I look forward to a life of wonderful things with my most excellent husband and great kids and good or bad I welcome anything life brings our way.