Hitting Home

The apartment complex dropped off our lease renewal form yesterday. We have until May 31st to either renew our lease or turn in our written notice of intent to vacate. We have to be out by July 31st. We simply cannot afford to stay here. I wanted to be candid about the emotions I have concerning this move. I hope I don't come off wrong. But, here goes nothing...

I'm sad. I LOVE our apartment. It has become home to me over the past two years. It is the first place Nathan and I have lived that didn't have an end date on it. We brought our child home to this apartment. I love the location, and the neighborhood. I love the suburb we live in, it is clean and safe and you never here of people getting murdered here even though we live in a very diverse area. It's great! We live across the street from the mall, within walking distance of a beautiful park with an awesome walking path, and within minutes of anything you could ask for! So I am incredibly sad to leave all this behind.

I am angry. Sort of. Moving was not on my agenda this year. I feel like I've just gotten the hang of this balance of being a mother and taking care of the house, and now I'm being uprooted. I knew we would not be staying in this apartment forever, but I always envisioned our next move being to a house where we would be for the next good long chunk of time. Now we are going to be moving to another apartment, and it will not be half as nice as the one we live in now. We have to cut the rent cost by several hundred dollars, and the way to do that is to get a smaller, not as nice apartment somewhere else. We are looking at another suburb. This one is okay, but not really as nice as the one we live in now. The apartment complex we are looking at is not within walking distance of anything. The ones that are, are too expensive. It is next door practically to the transit station... gotta love the smell and sound of buses in the morning. This is a suburb where people have recently been murdered... not too far from where we would be living. (Don't get me wrong it's not a totally dangerous area, it's just not as nice as where we live now. You would be hard pressed to find a suburb where there hasn't been violence! :)) Basically we are looking at a step backwards and I don't like that.

I am worried. I don't want to keep moving from temporary housing to temporary housing. It starts to get pointless after a while, and at some point you have to stop uprooting your family, especially your older children. I don't want to always think of where we are living as a temporary deal, but I don't want to be in this apartment for very long. I want to buy a house as soon as possible, so it's hard not to think that way. I am worried that we might never settle down somewhere. I am worried about Derek's schooling (even though I know it's way early. I never said these worries were rational!) The schools in the area we are moving to are not the greatest. We would be left with the option of private school or homeschool, and since I'm pretty sure we wouldn't be able to afford tuition at a private school, I would be forced to homeschool, which to be honest, I'm not sure I want to do. There's a lot of pressure in Christian circles to homeschool, and I'm not sure I would be good at it. (That's another blog post entirely! Haha!) Again, not that these worries are all rational at this point in time, I'm just being candid about how I'm feeling. I'm worried about going back to work. I'm going to have to go back to work part time at some point, and I don't want to. There aren't very many part time jobs out there that aren't retail and I do not want to go back to retail. I may not have a choice but I can't think of anything worse than going back into retail to be a sales associate at some store after being a manager for so long. I don't know, then there's the issue of childcare. What do I do with Derek while I'm working? My mom works part time, and it's pointless to pay for childcare when I'm only going to be making enough to cover that cost anyway. Then all I'm doing is throwing my paycheck at childcare. Right now my only option is to try to work my schedule around my mother's and hope that at some point I will be able to see my husband.

So anyway, that's where I'm at. I feel so bad because this is not where I want to be. I want to be thankful that we have the means to afford any roof over our heads! I want to be thankful that we don't have to move in with my parents. I want to be thankful that Nathan has a stable job even if it doesn't pay alot. I want to be thankful that my mom is willing to watch Derek for free. But I'm not any of those things right now. I guess I'm just not there yet. Maybe you all could pray for me that God will change my heart to have the right attitude about this. :)