22 challenges of 2022

I've only got a few days left of my break, which hasn't seemed like much of a break to me, and a lot of thoughts running around in my head that have never had a chance to get written down. So I'll try to tie them all in somehow into my last few blog posts of the year. Hey, if I keep them all inside, they'll feel caged in and won't let me start fresh for a new year. That's kind-of the way I work. 

Every year has its share of challenges, as well as highlight experiences (valleys and mountains). This year was not any different, bringing with it a lot of hard along with a lot of good. Of course we wish we could just take the good and never go through the bad, but what I've found is that sometimes you won't ever experience the good if you don't go through the bad first. So even when we wish we didn't have to go through the hard times, we can look back and cherish them because they led us to the good things.

So my final blogs for the year will be:

22 Challenges of 2022

22 Blessings of 2022

Reflections of my 2022 Word for the year

And January 1, I will write about my new word for 2023 and perhaps after that, 23 Things I'm Hoping for in 2023. We'll see. I have a much harder time trying to blog than I used to. I always have high hopes and good intentions, but reality looks a lot different now.

So here goes: 22 Challenges of 2022

1. COVID hit our home, forcing Juan and I to cancel our plane tickets on January 1st to fly to Indiana for Mike's dad's funeral. 
2. Starting off the year with Mike and David in Indiana for 3 straight weeks, bringing them home in a snowstorm and very icy roads with a trailer full of many of his dad's things. 
3. Wrestling through the thoughts of the possibility of moving to Indiana for Mike and I to pursue a business venture/mission opportunity--moving closer to his family and much further away from mine.
4. Finding the right words, timing, opportunity to tell Juan and the rest of my family about the possibility of moving away from them (Still think this in itself was by far my greatest challenge of the year)
5. Big ice storms in Texas
6. Working retail as a manager (Mike) with ever-changing schedules 
7. Being far away from his mom (Mike) while trying to help her navigate life as a widow and make decisions on changes in housing
8. Finding the right time to resign from my 19-year-teaching-career (in the same school) to give my principal the respect of having time to fill my position yet wanting to respect my own need for privacy (I'm that introvert that would have rather just disappeared over the summer months than to have to be the center of everyone's questions and/or gossip). 
9. Juan got into an accident and didn't have a car (other than his work truck) for our last several weeks in Texas
10. Starting out my first summer evening thinking a relaxing night awaited me while Mike, David, and Juan went outside to work on landscaping to get the house ready to sell, only to rush to rescue my cat from a strange fall and get bit by him, landing me in the hospital for two days a week later. So much for just having paid off all my medical bills from my post-covid heart issues the year before.
11. Having our first house contract fall through right before we had already arranged to move, leaving us to move anyway without the house funds we hoped to have to help with the move
12. Moving--especially having to pack a truck (Mike and David) when it was 107 degrees outside and then overloading the truck, making it very difficult to get up hills during the drive, specifically the very LAST hill. We had to call my brother-in-law in the middle of the night (he was up waiting for us, anyway) to bring his excursion to pull us up that last hill to get to his house. 
13. One of my closest co-workers lost her husband to a lung disease, and then about two weeks after that, my closest friend lost her husband to cancer. Ten weeks later, she was diagnosed with a very rare cancer herself and is fighting her own battle now amidst her grief. The same day she was diagnosed, I found out that another close coworker who had just lost her own husband within the year also lost her son to a heart attack. Knowing your friends are hurting so very deeply is so hard, especially when you are suddenly so far away.
14. Arriving at New Song Mission as the new, long-prayed-for teacher only to find out that we did not have houseparents, meaning we could not house students, meaning we had to delay the start of school for at least the first 9 weeks. (Try explaining that to people who knew you moved away for a very unique teaching position, especially to those who were skeptic about it.)
15. Finally living close to Mike's brother's family, only for them to all be extremely sick with COVID-like symptoms and a cough that lasted for weeks. 
16. Making yourself at home in a small RV on the beautiful campus at New Song, only to have the AC make a loud noise in the middle of the night and not be able to find a part to fix it for quite a long time. 
17. David getting the same COVID-like symptom sickness on the day he left to make his first ever 14 hour drive alone from Columbus, IN to Dallas. 
18. Torrents of rain that fell on Dallas (after a long drought) on the first day of class at DBU, soaking David's backpack, ruining his laptop that he obviously needed for classes
19. Dealing with awful stomach/digestive issues the entire first month I was in Indiana 
20. Buying an 85-year-old house that needed a LOT of work and complete renovation and then having to wait almost 2 months to close on said house. Then having to live in it while renovating it. God is teaching me a lot about contentment, gratitude, and patience. 
21. David got into a mountain-biking accident, broke both of his arms and dislocated both of his wrists and had to have surgery right away. He would need 24 hour care for several weeks and could not go back to school for the rest of the semester due to not being able to use either of his arms for at least two months. He could not fly for at least two weeks after his surgery, but he had nowhere to go because we had just moved a thousand miles away. 
22. Not having anywhere to feel settled and at home, even now 3 1/2 months after purchasing our house and property. Seems pretty minor compared to some of the other challenges, but honestly, not feeling truly at home anywhere is very unsettling.