Tender Mercies

You know how sometimes things happen and you just know without a doubt that you are being watched out for? That's how I'm feeling right now. Here's just a few of the latest examples:

1. Ben already wrote about the two car accidents that he was so close to last week. It was really scary. In fact,when one of them happened, I actually thought he had been involved in it. I didn't have a phone at the time, but I figured out how to send him text messages from the computer. So he “texts” me and tells me that there had just been a really bad car accident and that someone had died. Then... he didn't give me any other information for at least another half hour. Of course, that half hour felt like six hours, and you can imagine my relief when he walked in the door a little later. Relief, and immense gratitude. That's how I'd describe it.

2. There's been some sort of stomach bug in our house the past couple days. While this may not seem like much of a blessing at all, it's darn easy for me to view it as one. See, Ben works pretty much all day, everyday, and I sit around at home by myself doing, basically, nothing. After a while, that starts to wear on you a little bit. So while it's probably really selfish of me to be grateful for sickness, I gotta admit, it was real nice to be able to see my husband for a couple days.

3. We have been searching desperately, and for a long time, for a place to live in Provo when we move back at the end of this month. It has been quite a stressful experience, especially living so far away. We find one we like, and either the people won't return our calls, or the rent has gone way up in the past few weeks, or it's already been rented out... there was always something. We finally found a place that would work for us. We called the guy to tell him our decision, and he told us he had just promised it to someone else. They'd be making their final decision that night, and if it didn't work out for them, it was ours. We tried to think positively, but let's be honest, it was a real bummer. Then, by some miracle, the next morning, we gave him a call and he told us the other people had passed up the offer and the place was ours!

4. After months and months of waiting (seriously, we started this process the week after we got married) we were finally told today that we are eligible to receive some money from federal grants! Hallelujah!

5. Ben made a sale today. He is awesome. And very humble. Every time he makes a sale I shower him with praise and he immediately tells me that we need to give credit where credit is due and say a prayer of thanksgiving for the tender mercy we were just blessed with. As I said before, he is awesome.

There are countless more of these little tender mercies happening in our lives every minute, but I am well aware of the fact that our blog posts are always a little bit on the long side, so I'll spare you. But let it be known that we are a very blessed little family.

spoiled rotten.

Sharing the news with people that we'd be spending the very first few months of our marriage in the state of Arkansas, of all places, was one of my favorite things ever. You never knew quite how people would react. Usually it was an incredulous face that said "why the heck would any sane person EVER choose to live in such an uncivilized, god forsaken place out in the middle of nowhere?", while their mouth said something like, "Oh, how nice!" My favorite reaction was given by a guy at the open house in Ohio. It went something along the lines of "That's great guys! You'll have first hand experience in knowing exactly where you do NOT want to live later on!"

We were pretty thrilled about it though. We actually were really looking forward to the time we'd spend in "the Natural State," completely on our own for the first time. And to be honest, I'm only slightly ashamed to admit that I've grown a bit fond of the place.

It was really exciting when we first stepped into our apartment in North Little Rock. Washer, dryer, dishwasher, huge bay window in a spacious living room...it was more than we had hoped for, that's for sure. Sadly, I didn't get around to taking many pictures of that place, but we definitely enjoyed our time there. It was a nice area with a great ward, mall less than a mile away, Wal-Mart less than a mile, every restaurant you could want within five miles of our apartment. There was even a McDonalds down the road that we could steal wi-fi from if we could snag the right parking space. It was awesome. Ben worked his tail off doing door-to-door sales, and I managed to find a job at Outback within a week of living there (not as glamorous a job as you might think).

Boy, we were livin' the life in that place. Or so we thought. Until our arrival to our new apartment in Fayetteville, AR, where the first thing we saw when we walked in the door was this lovely sight:



After no TV whatsoever at the old place, imagine our excitement at finding not one, but THREE of these babies in our apartment. (The other ones are like an eighth of this size, but that is beside the point).

As we continued our tour through our new home, we discovered that we had two bedrooms, two bathrooms, washer, dryer, free internet, two huge closets, fancy artwork on every wall, balcony out back with a view of the golf course and two ponds, and a fully stocked kitchen. And when I say fully stocked, I mean, we pretty much had nothing to unpack. It came with silverware, pots, pans, cookie sheets, can opener, measuring cups, everything. It even came with a microwave! (didn't have one at the old place - quite a learning experience) Here's the proof:











AND, the first morning we were there, Wednesday, we got a knock on the door:
HOUSE KEEPING.

All I can say is we are are in big trouble when we head back to Provo, because currently, we are being spoiled rotten.