What a difference a year can make

I have been thinking a lot this week about where we were this time last year and how much has changed for us.  For one thing, this baby has grown up a ton!  In this pic he was 3 months old and we were still in our little apartment.  We (I especially) were running out of hope that we would ever find a house to rent. Our time to give notice of moving out of our apartment was days away and we had been to look at pretty much every rental home in Liberty Lake to no avail.  None of them felt right and I was really discouraged.  

Look at this boy now!  He is 15 months and as busy as ever.  Into everything and wanting to be big like his sister and brother.  During the first week of November we got a call from Garrett's cousin's husband telling us about his friend and how he wanted to find a family with young kids to rent his house.  I did not allow myself to get excited or my hopes up because I had been dissapointed so many times.  So Garrett gave the guy a call and when he got off the phone and told me about the house I almost didn't believe him.  We got in the car and drove by the house that minute and again I was completely floored that this possibility had come our way.  Still I didn't want to get my hopes up too high.  

The next night we went to this house and walked through with the owner.  He told us to pray about it and I responded that we had been for over six months and that this was the answer to our prayers.  The next day we worked out the details of the lease and moved in a couple weeks later over Thanksgiving weekend.  

These babies were such troopers through those six months of Hell for their parents.  Between studying for the Bar all day, looking for jobs in the spare moments, me being pregnant and wondering if we would ever live in a house or if I would be able to have a VBAC we were two very stressed and discouraged people.  But it was as the scriptures say, "our trials were only but a moment" ( I can see that now in hind sight) and our Delivery was better than anything we could have hoped for.

November 4th marked one year that Garrett's firm has been open.  The fact that we were able to open a business and keep it open for a whole year in this economy is nothing short of miraculous and we don't have a day go by without acknowledging that.  We could never have done this on our own and never have.  There were so many moments when business would start to slow down and we would start to worry about the coming month and then the next day two new clients would walk through the door.  I have seen the Lord's hand each day in our lives this past year and it is so fitting for the one year anniversary of our deliverance to coincide with Thanksgiving.  I can never express enough thanks for the trials and miracles of the past 18 months of our lives.  We are so blessed.  It just so happens that the woman that lived in our house had a scripture in lettering over the sink in our kitchen and it is one of my favorite scriptures: "Be still and know that I am God."  I have looked at that scripture every day this year and remembered that I need to be still and trust in Him and that He has never and will never leave me alone.