I’ve said it here several times but my life is unpredictable. You wouldn’t know that by looking at my domicile history.
When I was married Barb and I had a habit of moving fairly frequently. We counted 21 places of residence during the first 20 years of our marriage.
We never lived three years at any one address. Our families hated us for ruining their address books. All they had to do is use sticky notes for us.
There usually weren’t any major reasons for us to move. We often felt God leading us to venture out, but then we’d move back with our tails between our legs a few months later.
That probably has something to do with her leaving me.
Well, I just spent over an hour electronically signing and initialing my eleventh lease for my 700 square foot apartment.
Lease folks are quite creative in their rate options these days. At twelve months I’m offered the best monthly rate. At thirteen months the cost rises, so does each month short of twelve. That’s why I opted for a full year.
At first they offered a thirteen month renewal for the same rate as a twelve monther. So I took that.
Then they only offered a ten month renewal for a couple of years.
All that to say at one month into this lease I will have been living in this same place for a full decade. That’s quite a milestone for me…I guess.
There are a few significant memories here.
On August 8, 2012 Barb’s car was gone when I returned home from work. When I opened the door so was about a third of everything inside the apartment. That’s the day she finally physically moved out. She was emotionally gone when we moved in here almost three years before then.
On March 3, 2014 I checked on a bump in the night to find a potential burglar in my home. I think I scared him more than he scared me by how quickly he exited the front door he was trying to open for his buddy.
I don’t know what I sounded like to him but the sound coming from inside my body sounded like I was demon possessed to me.
The best paying driving job I ever had ended in December, 2014 over something that should have been a warning in my opinion.
My mom’s life on this earth ended near the end of February, 2015.
I wish I could say all of those events were balanced by a happy memory but they aren’t.
To be quite blunt with y’all my life has been rather excruciating this past decade…and that’s on the good days.
My writing career has stalled. I still have a pile of books in the corner from a publisher that went out of business.
My illustrator’s life this past few years makes my life look glamorous in comparison. It’s looking promising for the storybook app, Have You Heard of the Heard, to become real soon.
I know I’m in God’s will for my life. He’s now giving me songs to sing. I have five completed with a few more I’m working on as I drive.
Thanks to a CD with vocal warmup exercises from Roger Love I can now sing rather well consistently. Before I had a few good days with mostly croaking days.
I’ve been in contact with a publisher that might put 100 Prayers of a Writer back in print and ebook. All I need to do is come up with $1,000.
It’s looking like the family farm is about to sell. That inheritance money will make it possible for me to attend a writer’s conference in September. I’m praying for God’s leading about the other books I have ready to roll.
I usually feel more optimism heading into a new lease. I hope this will be the last one I sign before my new lease on life begins.
I think I’ve been in God’s waiting room so long that I’m feeling invisible and forgotten. I know I haven’t been.
As I frequently tell Dyann, my illustrious illustrator: it’s always darkest before the dawn.
I know I serve a God capable of turning things around without warning. I could be one of those overnight sensations that’s more than ten years in the making.
Pray for me. That will be a change that will be harder to adjust to than living in this apartment for the rest of my life.
God is good all the time.
I’ll see you later. Wade
