Grace and Hardwork

Before I go any further in this blog I want to be very clear about two things. #1 My goal is to live a Christ centered life, which isn't always easy. Because this is my goal, I will at times mention my faith. This is never meant to offend, but as this is a personal blog, I cannot, will not remove mention of this. I hope if you are reading this, you would know this about me already. #2 If it was not for the journey Christ has put my husband and I on, we would not be doing this and I would not be writing this. By his grace we have been given this opportunity, and only that.
Hard work has had it's place. If you have ever known or met my husband, you would know he is a stubborn ole coot. You would also know that his dream has always been to find a chunk of land in the county that he could call his own. A former boss of Dan's once wrote a letter of recommendation for him, and it simply said Dan is the epitome of a hard working man. At his former job Dan had no sick days in his contract, and if they needed to stay home ill they would need to use a vacation day. When he badly herniated a disc a few years ago the only time he missed was when he had an appointment with a physician, and those were scheduled out of work time as much as possible. For a number of months he could not sit down without being in a tremendous amount of pain. Each morning he would pull himself out of bed, and then he'd somehow get himself into our car, and drive the 25 to 30 minute drive to his job. He was rattled with pain the entire way. Then at the end of the day, he would do the same thing to come home. I in the mean time had gone back to work full time, and we started to think about being able to find our place in the country. In the fall of 2008, while Dan was pulling him self into work each day, we found out that his employer was going to be closing their location, and that he would soon be out of a job. After talking to a number of doctors about his back, we had surgery approved, and in March of 2009 he had back surgery. We weren't sure at the time if he would have a job to return to, but they ended up staying open for a couple more years. During this time, we were pretty careful to not spend a lot of money. We prayed and searched for what Dan would do for a job or business, and sometime in 2012 we knew that God had something else for him, we just weren't sure what it was. We just knew that as long as he stayed where he was, he couldn't move forward. We had a couple of opportunities come up, and he decided to take the next layoff that his company put out. Dan's last day of employment was on the anniversary of his first day. He had put in 24 years exactly. A week before his last day he had been offered a job with great benefits just 10 min. from home.
While raising our kids I have had a number of conversations about their hardworking father. Both Dan and I would praise hard work, and where it could get you, but to be honest, our kids had really never really seen that their dad's hard work had paid off. I promised my kids, that it would, that I had faith in God that God would bless their dad for his hard work, and faithfulness. When we purchased this property, both my children knew that God had done just that. God keeps his promises, and he does bless faithfulness and hard work. Now, both of our kids have full time jobs. Their employers are usually astonished with their work ethic, and we could not be prouder of them.
On Sept. 23, 2013 we celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary by taking Dan's parents down to show them the land.

Over looking our creek know as Coal creek

Our view across the creek

Walking up to the campsite from the creek view

Sorry about getting my finger in the picture. This over looks our Coal creek. 2013 was very dry and we were in drought conditions. I need to take this shot again after all our rain over the past few weeks.