house of Mold Part 1
Have you ever prayed for something for years and God finally started opening doors. Then, you walk through a really tough chapter of your story wondering if it was the right decision?
This was us only a couple of years ago. We had prayed for land for our kids to play outside of the city, a garden, and maybe some chickens. We wanted to be able to offer our kids outdoor freedom, connection to their food, etc. Guess what? He answered! These city folks moved to a little town 40 minutes away from where we both have spent majority of our lives. When we got there it felt like this was it, that we were heading in the right direction. We were also met with loneliness. We left a church that had a huge piece in saving our marriage and deep rooted community. Once we got to this town we thought to ourselves…"what the hell did we do?” Finding a church out here has been a chore in and of itself. However, we do have our homeschool community, and we gained some incredible neighbors who have become so close to us. Where we mourned our old community, He was opening the doors to new community and deeper existing relationship we had. Though we felt a little confused in the beginning and a little lonely, He has showed up in beautiful ways since. It’s important to make the space in accepting the BIG changes we were walking through.
Through this past year we have seen our kids grow leaps and bounds. This space was oh so good for them and us too. We decided to plant a garden, build a chicken coop, get chickens for said coop, and got a puppy all at once. We really went for it with this homesteading gig. Shew! It was hard work and we failed, yet we learned so many lessons and never gave up.
Anyway, we had truly settled into our home, or so we thought. When we purchased the house, the inspector informed us that they had found small amounts of mold growth in our crawlspace and it was nothing to worry about. At the time, I had no clue about how intense mold could be for someone, although I was skeptical about buying this house because I knew it could be somewhat harmful. Despite our reservations, we proceeded with the sale due to the insane market, living in my in-law’s basement, and everything else, except for a few things, the house for the most part was what we were looking for. We thought we could take care of the mold later, if it became an issue.
We honestly forgot about it for a while until we started noticing some changes with an increase in big emotions in our kids, even pickier eating, an insane amount of weight gain for both myself and Sean, cognitive decline, anxiety, depression, intense fear, feeling trapped, lots of joint pain, extreme fatigue, and brain fog. Then, one day, it clicked! Nothing in our life had changed except moving into that house. I had worked on my own health for the past couple of years and had been feeling so good, never felt that incredible. The decline was quick! Looking back on all of this, I realized these symptoms started creeping in only a few months after moving in. To be honest, knowing all of these changes were happening, we still kept pushing it off because we questioned ourselves - "Can mold REALLY cause all of this?" We also felt lost on where to even begin.
We put it off for as long as we could, and in the summer of 2023 is when we realized we couldn’t wait any longer…
Sometimes we walk through the unexpected in life and there is where we uncover the most profound lessons.
Part 2 is coming! Stay tuned!
