As most of you know, about a year and a half ago, my husband and I finally made the leap of faith to follow our dream of buying a house in the country. We sold our house and moved into an apartment while praying and searching for the right place to pop up. During that time I became pregnant and gave birth to our 4th child, and the kids have all been so excited to get our "farm" and get out of the city. This has been such a long and agonizing journey. We never could find a house that felt right, so we ended up buying 10 acres of raw land and having a modular home built. I won't go into all the details, but every single step of the way things have gone wrong. We've been lied to, things have been done poorly, and we've encountered more and more costs that have now put us basically to the limit of what we can afford. Which means there will be precious little left for buying things we need to actually do anything with our land like grow some of our own food and raise some animals. The house is currently done but we can't get anyone to call us back about putting a fireplace in (a wood-burning fireplace didn't come with the house, and I feel it would be important to have one with the frequent power outages and the times that seem to be upon us). And our water well has so many issues. It's brand new but the tank keeps filling entirely (not supposed to happen) and sediment has gone into all the water lines of the house and the water has tasted like sulfur and tests poorly in so many areas it would take a $7,000 filtration system to correct it. We're hoping the problem is all caused by a faulty tank, and we're hoping the well guy will put a new tank in without charging us. We won't know what he says until Monday. (I would so appreciate prayers that the well will be fixed and the water will be clean!) This has delayed our move yet again. We are so discouraged and could really use some wisdom and advice. My sister's family and my dad began their search after we did, found their place, bought it and moved in months ago, with pretty much no problems. My husband and I have struggled with not knowing how to discern if God even wanted us to move to this land in the first place.. We prayed so much and never felt a clear answer, so we took a leap of faith and every step of the way has been one setback after another that has caused us a great many tears. At what point do we take it as a sign that we made a mistake? How do we know if God is causing these obstacles or not? I will say that some AMAZING spiritual things have happened during this time. Two of my children, and my brother who was away from the faith for nearly a decade, announced that they're called to the religious life/priesthood. Things I have prayed for for many years are happening all around me. Conversions all throughout my family. My brother is advancing spiritually at an astonishing rate. As we've gone to daily Mass more and I've watched my son serve as acolyte, these spiritual things have brought me so much more joy than the thought of my house/land bring me, even imagining everything finally going right. It's like I've lost my dream a bit. I feel very detached from it all now, and that makes me sad, because I dreamed of this for about a decade. It's all so confusing. What if it was a foolish dream, based on all the beautiful pictures of farm life in the pictures I read to my children, and God didn't actually want me to move out there? What if I was supposed to stay in the city, where it only takes 15 minutes to get to Mass at my beautiful FSSP parish, and just go to daily Mass and focus on spiritual things instead of longing for the fresh air, fruit trees, gardens and chickens? I need wisdom, advice, and prayers.
PF, thanks for your honesty and your tales of woe. I will pray for your intentions and your enlightenment in this matter.
In just reading your post, I sense you are on the right path. All the stuff going wrong is a sign of that. Huge blessings have been given to those around you and your setbacks are paying for them. Someone has to stand in the gap! With all that's going on with you right now, ask yourself, "Am I ok in this moment?" And your answer will be, "Yes," because the Lord is with you in the present. All will be well, keep going! I got a prompt from the Lord some years ago to start a specific type of online prayer practice. The very day I launched it, I suffered a spinal injury which had me in agony and lying on the floor for the following few months. Since then I have had two spinal reoccurrences and other unusual illnesses. I'm only home from hospital yesterday for an ongoing issue, have an infection in my leg now on a totally different issue, and have to have an op in a couple of weeks for another problem, all totally unrelated to each other. And I slipped on some tiles a while back and whacked my head off the floor, had headaches for weeks. However, I receive emails constantly, telling of tremendous blessings people are receiving from the online prayer set up. It's all worth it and The Lord is glorified!
You said it well, BC. I agree with you. I remember when I had my wisdom teeth out, I had one problem after another which delayed my healing and the pain was intense. At the time I was wearing my miraculous medal and the surgeon said, “ if anyone would have problems, it would be you.”
Oh I totally understand your frustration. We moved into our house two years ago and one problem after another. We had a leaky roof all summer! It was so bad I was catching water in three buckets in three different rooms. We ordered the new roof in July but it couldn't be installed until last week. All summer we had a drought so not too bad. The week before the roof came in we had a torrential downpour and I couldn't sleep in my own bed! But, new roof was installed last week and this week it's been rain every day! So I thank God we got through it. You will, too. Just think of the nice new home you have. You are almost in it . . .after the long haul. Peace! Oh, we had a woodstove installed last spring. The place we bought it had several people they recommended for installation, you could try that. The little voice telling you it was a mistake is not from God, . . .it's to agitate you. Don't pay any attention to it.
And just for the record Purple Flower, you have really impressed me with your posts on this MoG Forum. I take what you write to heart. I think you are relatively young but you present as being full of wisdom and really close to the Lord. BC
Hang on! I went through hell and back for 3 months to get my house in order. Everything went wrong. But it was worth it. All the pain and anxiety brought something wonderful. My husband is more involved in the Church than ever before. He’s actually going to Bible classes! It’s such an amazing change. Suffering for some of us is needed to bring about blessings for those around us. I will pray to St Anthony and the Virgin of Loreto for you. I know they will help you, and your beautiful family. Don’t lose hope. Stay healthy. That’s very important. You need your strength to keep going.
Oh wow! Well my problems seem very small compared to yours! Thank you so much for the encouragement. It's hard to remember sometimes that God's Will doesn't mean things will go smoothly. It seemed very strange at the time, but before my husband and I made the decision to sell our house, we prayed a 30 day novena to St. Joseph for courage if we should do it...and on the day it was over, we got into an argument over the decision, which is extremely unusual for us. It felt so strange, like something hostile was prompting it, and when my husband left the room, I prayed the St. Michael prayer and resolved to do whatever my husband thought was best. He walked immediately back into the room, apologized, and said we should sell the house. I forget that sometimes...how I really felt like something was attacking us to prevent us from moving.
Oh goodness, I had some bad problems with my wisdom teeth removal too...dry sockets and huge swelling...and I was wearing medals too! That's so funny your doctor said that!
Thank you! Man, a leaky roof for so long! That's no fun. Our roof was leaking a couple weeks ago too... It turns out they had forgotten to seal a vent in the roof.
Thank you for your kind words. I'm so grateful for all the wise people on this forum who advise and pray for me!
That's wonderful it brought your husband closer to God! You're right of course, but discouragement can creep in and make me forget.
Take the long view. Everything will work out. Give it time. We moved from a modern house in the country to a derelict farm. Our youngest child was 11 at the time and our oldest was just 16. The roof blew off on our first Christmas as we were hit with a freak tornado that wrecked the place. Would you believe the same thing happened the following Christmas. We had a leaking roof for a few years. Every saucepan in the house had to be utilised to catch drips. The list was endless. There were difficulties at every turn and limited resources. We barely kept our heads above water. The one thing I took note of was my children were happy and looked on it as a great adventure. Our families thought we were mad. I'm now here 25 years and we are still working at it. The blessing for me is that my son and daughter are both married and living beside us with our 10 grandchildren. It has helped us all grown in faith. Remember All will be well and all matters of things will be well. You are a faithful servant of the Lord and He is with you every step of the way.
When there are that many issues and if despite prayers, plans don't seem to be working out, for me it has always been a sign to step away from everything till He moves in our spirit - in one way or another. For a very long time now, things have been getting increasingly difficult where we are located now (the commute to church, our jobs, kids' education etc.), and I began to dream and pray that we could leave this place and at least be close to a church. I began to look up listings for houses for sale and even land for sale as it has also been my dream that we would be able to build ourselves a home. A year ago, when things were getting so tough with work, these words were placed on my heart: The end is nigh. A new life awaits you.Naturally, I assumed that it had to do with a move, and day and night, I scanned the horizon for hope because I felt that I could not go on even another month in this place. But when more than a year had passed and there was no sign that the dream was to materialise anytime soon, one day, I became very dejected. It felt like life had lost all its colour and that we were stuck in this place here. I turned to God and asked, for what seemed the millionth time, How long more, Lord? As if in answer came the most unexpected reply, Let us go on as we have done so far and leave everything in God's hands. He will let us know when to change course. ~ St John Bosco You cannot imagine how much peace flooded through me at those words, to know God is truly, truly in charge. I do know this in my mind but ever so often, I guess I need help to shift that conviction to my heart. That day, St John Bosco helped make that shift. I was finally able to let go of all I had dreamed and planned and put them all into God's hands. Our stories are not the same, PF, but perhaps there's something in mine that can help you.
I had to leave a small farm we had purchased and go elsewhere, due to the number of terrible setbacks and disasters we experienced there on that property. I felt, in the end, that the property was cursed. Since then, I will not go to the area, not to the county, not to the province. My memories of it all are so bad. A counsellor diagnosed me with PTSD after I went through with her the chain of events. I went there out of obedience to my husband, out of my duty to let him lead, but in the end it proved he had been mistaken to take his family there. In the end, he also could not wait to get away from it and sell it. ( We lost money in selling it, too. ) Our marriage did not survive the trauma of it all it and ended finally in anullment. Yes, there was as reason we had an invalid marriage but all of the disasters there were the absolute death knell . So I have a different perspective of your story. We renovated the place while there, and it was beautiful to look at, with a lovely garden, a stream running through it, etc. but still, too many accidents and the whole family sick with water poisoning issues, ( salmonella, followed by Campylobacter) and stock illness, and stock losses and criminals visiting the property and children almost dying from accidents, and I will add the neighbours suffered disasters too. It seemed the valley itself was cursed. I never think about it now. I live in a small city. Once, years later, I asked Our Lady " Where should I live?" She answered: " Near the Church"
