That Wasn’t the Plan

So as most of you know, about a year ago we bought a 5 acre plot of land to build our dream home! Our original plan was to start on the build around this time this year.

Isn’t it funny how our plans sometimes don’t work out the way we want?

Well about two months ago, just a couple of months before we were going to start getting our plans drawn up…my husband lost his job.

Obviously, this was completely unexpected and threw a big ole wrench in our original plans. At first, I was pretty upset and feeling down…. thinking to myself ‘oh great, yet one more thing that didn’t go according to plan’. In complete transparency, my anxiety started taking over and feeling like we were never going to accomplish our dreams, that the world was against us.

Now, two months later, I see the plan. The plan that I couldn’t see the day he lost his job. What we really NEEDED, not what we originally WANTED.

“What we really needed, not what we originally wanted.”

You see, my husband has been home these two months. Before he lost his job, he was the first to leave the house and the last to get home. He would miss school field trips and special days. He would miss dinner and putting our kids down for bed. We both worked, so clothes and dishes would pile up and the household maintenance would be pushed aside.

But now, these last two months, he has been home. He has been at every t-ball game and field trip. He has been picking up kids and dropping off kids, signing the forms, reading stories, cooking dinner and packing lunches, tackling that huge laundry pile, cleaning up the house, and washing dishes.

It wasn’t until he lost his job that we realized just how much stress it was causing us both keeping up with these things while both working full-time (not to mention running The Joyful Bee Co.). Now that he has been home, I’ve come to realize it has lifted this huge weight off my shoulders.

Since he was the first to leave every morning and the last to get home, I was responsible for getting the kiddos ready and taking to preschool, facilitating appointments and taking off work, picking up and cooking dinner….it was so exhausting.

Now some of that weight has shifted, yes at a price, but sometimes we don’t realize what we really need. Yes, we are still planning our home build, just at a slower pace, but this time he has been home has been such a huge part of putting my mental health back together.

Our new plan, is to get The Joyful Bee Co. up and running to where he can be handling the business from home. This does change our home building plan. We still have our land that we purchased and will still plan to build, but just at a slower pace.

Now, obviously this changes our finances, and we are running a much tighter ship these days, but I have to be thankful that we are in a position where we can still provide for our family without his job. Years ago, this would have devastated our family and our finances, but we have spent the last several years getting our financial home in order, to prepare for the unexpected, like this.

If anything, this pushes me to work towards our dreams even harder. We will struggle, we will fail, we will veer off the plan, but we will be happy in running towards the things that we want out of life.