The Apartment Dilemma

God has been really good to us. Eddie and I both got jobs within 2 weeks of being here. (Eddie is working in the tech department at Mesa Community College.) We've also been so blessed to have the hospitality of the McGeehon family; I'm pretty sure that they would have us living here permanently if they could.

But my heart yearns for my own home. We have been "couch hopping" now for about 7 weeks and I am ready to have our own place with our own bed and our own stuff. I also really want to be able to use our place for inviting people over for meals and coffee, but I can't really do that when I am the invited guest. So although we have been truly blessed by the hospitality of our brothers and sisters in Christ, I am ready to get an apartment.

We didn't want to get an apartment before we got jobs here, since that seemed unwise, but within 48 hours of being here I had been hired at Paradise Bakery, so we started our apartment search. We looked at a couple different places and decided that we wanted to live in the same apartments as the Gaudy's (who had already signed a lease) and so we started the paperwork with The Montego Apartments. But most apartment complexes want proof of your income in order to approve you. After explaining our situation and showing a bank statement of how much we have in savings they said that we just needed income proof for one of us.

And so it began. Apparently Paradise uses a third party company to provide proof of employment and income, but because I haven't actually gotten paid yet I can get the proof we need from that company. So that has been a dead end. But thankfully Eddie was also hired and so we decided to get proof of his employment instead. And yesterday we were so close. Eddie went in and got a signed letter from his HR department and we took it over to the apartment. But we left the apartments dejected after being told that the information the apartment needed wasn't in the letter Eddie was given.

I was so disheartened. I had really thought that yesterday would be the day when we would finally be able to put in our application and hopefully have our apartment by this weekend. And I realized by the way that my heart was reacting to the situation that I needed to give this whole apartment thing up to the Lord. I wanted an apartment so badly that I was unwilling to trust in his timing for when we would actually get one. So after a little alone time with the Lord and some gospel preaching to my heart, I was able to repent of my lack of faith and put it back into my Saviors hands.

Today we plan on trying again. We'll drive back to Eddie's work and see if they can put the pertinent information into another letter for us. And by God's grace we'll be able to finally get the ball rolling on our apartment. But if it doesn't happened today, then I will praise the Lord that we are not homeless and that we have a place to stay as long as we need it. God has provided even if it isn't exactly the way I want him to.