An Unexpected Beginning

Where to start? I'm a mother of 7 kids. My husband and I and our children live in a basement. My parents basement. Luckily its not a dark dirty hole, its a hobbit hole. Full of little hungry people and fun. Lots of windows and even a door, although its just a regular door not a round one. 

I suppose its hard to call this blog the beginning when the story doesn't actually start here. The story actually starts with our home in the city. This home had become worn down due to a large family living in it for 9 years, and lack of money for house renovations. But It was ours, we had a place, however broken it was. 

We decided to go on a family trip, we knew we didn't have the money, but we went anyway. While we were gone our basement flooded (which it normally did in wet weather, but we weren't there to deal with it) and it stayed wet in the basement for several days. We came home to all of our things ruined. All of my children's rooms were in the basement, we had to replace every mattress. That alone costs a fortune, but it was the least of our troubles. Every toy, every book, everything we owned was now in a home that reeked of mildew. 

The night we got home from our camping trip was our last time being in our home. From then on my parents invited us to stay with them. We promised to stay for only a little while, but things don't always go as planned. We tried buying a house but we had too much debt. We paid down our debt but had business trouble so we still couldn't get a loan. Finally, my husband switches jobs and our school debt is paid down by half AND we had a sizeable down-payment. We knew that was finally enough to get a loan. We knew it...until it didn't. Apparently being a new 1099 is looked at by lenders as being a jobless loser...who knew. 

So over the past (almost)three years we have been trying to get out of my parents house. Heck we even looked into rent to own options, but everything has fallen through. We were doing everything we were supposed to be doing, why is nothing working? God can do anything right? Then why are we still here? We have been told our whole lives that God will magnify our efforts. I have done literally everything in my power to leave, yet in my parents basement we remain. 

Really I suppose this is the beginning of an attitude shift. Because me, being an adult with my own family, and having to live in my parents home is not the dream I wanted. It's almost been three years and instead of still trying to buy a house, we took all of our savings and paid off every last ounce of debt to our name. We have, with a lot of encouragement from my parents, decided (somewhat kicking and screaming) to stay.

How do 9 people live in a basement? Well, that's what stories are for.