Wow, just wow! Where to start?
It’s been a crazy couple of weeks for me. Training camp has come and gone. [Future training camp blog post coming soon.] Being back home after training camp has been difficult. It’s been hard to focus and stay present knowing I only have a few weeks left, one in Oklahoma, one in Indiana, and one in North Carolina.
I have been wrapping things up at work, which is hard to do after being there over four years. I have been slowly saying my goodbyes to friends and family here in Oklahoma, and I have come to realize there are some people I won’t be able to see before I go, which makes my heart sad. I have been crossing things off my list left and right with only a couple of important things left to do.
One big thing left on that list is my car. I have been on the fence about selling it or keeping it. I still owe $8,000 on the loan. So, I have been preparing myself for the possibility of either selling it for less than I owe and eating the difference, or keeping it and finding a way to make the payments while I am gone. I have put off doing anything because making a decision either way seemed too hard. One Thursday, I decided it was time to make a move in one direction or the other. I took my car to Carmax to get a better idea of how much I would be in the hole if I sold it. After an hour of waiting, they offered me $2,000. Talk about a punch to the gut. There is no way I could or would pay someone $6,000 to take my car. I thought, great, now I will have to scramble and figure out a way to keep making the monthly payments.
I left Carmax super discouraged and in a complete daze. It had been a long day at work and I wasn’t thinking straight. I stopped by Natural Grocers on my way home. I had never even been in that store before, but I needed to kill some time before driving home. I didn’t want to get stuck in traffic. I walked around the store probably three times, up and down each aisle, still completely frazzled. I bought $50 worth of snacks… SNACKS and then got the heck out of there. The next morning, I couldn’t find my wallet anywhere. It wasn’t in my car; it wasn’t in my purse; it was nowhere! I got to thinking, surely, I didn’t leave it at Natural Grocers; that would be really bad; all of my credit/debit cards are in there and so is my driver’s license; now is not the time to lose and have to replace all of that important stuff! I called Natural Grocers to see if anyone turned in a wallet and surprisingly enough, someone had! They had my wallet and more importantly, nothing was missing. Everything was still in there, including the cash I had! So, to whoever found and turned in my wallet, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!
On Sunday, I spent the afternoon with my cousin Anna and her family. She lives on the farm my grandparents used to own and mom grew up on. She was selling one of her horses, Crocodile Joseph. [Her oldest son, Cruz, is just so creative when it comes to naming animals!] I was up at the barn helping her round up her other horses so she could catch Crocodile Joseph. Two of the horses, Rosie and Crackerjack, were bumping into me pretty hard trying to get to the food bucket I was holding. All of a sudden, Rosie stepped right on the top of my foot. I was wearing ballet flats. So, there was nothing in-between the bottom of her foot and the top of my foot. OUCH! My gosh! That was seriously the longest 5 seconds of my life! I was so worried my foot was going to be broken, or worse, that it would fall off [no not really, just kidding]. One week later, much to my surprise, my foot is only a little sore and hardly even bruised! I mean how is that even possible, when a horse weighing somewhere between 500 and 1,000 pounds directly stomps on your foot?!
Fast forward two days to last Tuesday. With my $10,000 deadline only one week away and a little less than $3,000 needed to get there, I was starting to feel the pressure and I slowly started to panic. The week before was the first time I felt like things were starting to go wrong. Stress and fear were slowing rising up in me, but then I got a text from my pastor and all of a sudden, the worry and doubt I had been feeling, left me immediately.
Stay tuned for Part 2.
