Finding happiness and peace

It was about 2 years ago that I started praying, planning, and letting go. After my husband’s diagnosis of PKD, I went through a mourning period, where I cried for the loss of the future we had planned together. We had several dreams about our future…. more children, a house on the coast, and money to go on trips. I’m sure there were other dreams too, but they have been forgotten with time. It was around August of that year, that the plans came together for downsizing to 100 items and moving to a small cabin and creating our own homestead. That has been our new “dream” and we have been working towards that goal.

Thursday Hubby did his first full night of peritoneal dialysis here at home. It is rough on us, mostly because we are exhausted, but we are praying with time, we will adjust and things will be easier. Thursday before coming home from the medical center we met with our social worker there. She is the one that is helping us figure out our financial needs and to make sure hubby can continue to get medical care.

Our plan was to move in June of 2014, right after our older daughter graduates from high school, to a piece of land where we would start our new life. The social worker, however, gave us some news that has now “taken” our dream again. For now we must stay in Pennsylvania. Don’t get me wrong, we like it here, but we can’t afford a homestead here. Our plan was to move to Tennessee (we have found countless pieces of land for $1,000 an acre, which is unheard of here in PA). The last few days have been pretty cloudy. Mostly from being tired, adjusting to the new routines, and trying to get all the end of the school year stuff done. Even though my head has been cloudy, I think I have started to mourn again the life we had been dreaming of. I’m not saying it is never going to happen, but it probably won’t be happening in our time frame.

What does that mean? That means I need to find happiness and peace in the home we have. I need to create as much of a homestead as I can on our 1/4 acre that doesn’t allow livestock I have my gardens, my apple and plum trees, and one day hopefully two chickens. I would like a beehive and after checking I am allowed to have one, but right now that is a little more work than I care to think about. We are still working towards our 100 items. We are still dreaming of one day living mortgage free in our future small home. We are still praying that we will be able to have animals and provide for ourselves from the land that we will work together. But a part of me still feels like that dream is disappearing too, but I’m praying and hoping anyway.