Ask for a Sign and You May Get Robbed.

Proverbs 16:9- 

The mind of man plans his way, But the LORD directs his steps.

This past week, every time I would FaceTime with Mark back home, he was always the bearer of bad news...

 "Hon, the propane company is on our backs to pay the last bill and the tank is almost empty, we need to come up with another $4000 to fill it"

"Hon, the dryer is broken and is just days shy of being covered under the warranty."

"Hon, the military wants us to pay back hundreds of dollars in pay because you've been out of the State for more than 26 days."

"Hon, the phone company have been charging us extra long distance fees and we are behind in bills."

"Hon, here is a ton of doctor bills that tricare won't cover."

Everyday, it was something else and things started to weigh on my mind. I didn't stress or panic because The Lord has always provided for us and this time was no different. Finally after all this I checked our Canadian bank account and our tax refund had gone in after only a few weeks when we weren't expecting it for months. 

So the credit card is paid off, home school curriculum is bought for next year and our Christmas ski vacation is paid for next year. 

Now that we are able or breathe a little bit easier, we are still faced with some hard decisions to make. 

   For the past 18 months we've been managing to carry the bills on our massive log house, just barely. 

And even though we have managed to weather all these new bills we can't maintain it long term and still do what we want to do.

Now I can hear you saying, "But Becky, you just spent 10 weeks vacationing in Florida." If we can afford that, surely we can handle some bills? 

Firstly, this trip would not have been possible without my grandparents paying for the condo rental, paying for our Disney tickets and essentially feeding us while we have been down here. We are very grateful to my Nanny and Baba for their generosity and we cherish the time we've been able to spend with them before we head back to living a country apart from them.

And secondly, we could continue to live in our house, paying through the nose to heat it and gas money to travel back and forth to the city for work and shopping but we don't want to. Aside from the fact we hate living there, we have plans to live and travel on the boat which we can't save for while maintaining that house.

So, the past few days Mark and I have been trying to figure out a way to get out of the house and move onto the boat sooner than we had planned to. And we were smacked with a million problems. We came around to the solution that we could leave the house empty, shut off the utilities and move into the boat since we can't get out of our lease until the military posts us back to Canada, it seems like the best solution. When I ran the numbers, we could save a lot of money this way. But this scenario has problems too, the boat is not ready to move on to. And we have no money to fix it up fast, our rehab budget has been exhausted and living in our house we have no extra money to spend on it.

The ultimate catch-22.

This brings us to today's 'bad' news from Mark.

When we bought our boat it came with a 10 horse power outboard motor, it had been sitting on its side unused for months so the carberator was gunked up and needed work. For the past six months it has been sitting in garbage can of water in our garage so Mark could try to get it running so we could sell it. 

This morning our marina was having their annual garage sale/swap meet where we had hoped to bring the motor and our oversized water tanks to sell and hopefully get some money to keep working on the boat. We weren't very hopeful, because we have been trying to sell it on craigslist and Facebook for months to no avail and because it wasn't running we couldn't have hoped to get much for it.

Anyway, Mark goes out to the garage this morning to load the motor into the truck and it is gone, someone had stolen it.

Now things get strange. It seems highly improbable that our place could be robbed. We live in the middle of nowhere!

Here is our driveway.

Our front yard . No way you can see us from the road.

What? Can't you see us in there?

All the lovely trees, blah. (Cute bunny though.)

Turning onto our dirt road which dead ends. Only deer here.

We are miles away from town, down a hidden dirt road, on seven acres of densely forested land. People who actually try to find us can barely find us, so it seems impossible that someone would wander onto our property while we weren't home and steal a motor out of our garage.

Here is our garage. Large front doors and a side door.

Now it gets really strange. Our house and garage has been locked up tight for the last two months while we have been gone, Mark came home and opened the side door which he kept unlocked but the front doors were still barred. 

Two days ago the motor was still in its spot when Mark took out the mower to mow the lawn but this morning it was gone.

Strangest of all is why this person took that 100 lb, broken motor and not the brand new, still in its box motor sitting on the floor right in front of it? Or the surf boards on the wall? Or the motorbike? 

None of this makes sense and seems completely impossible.

But as Mark is laying it all out for me, about filing the police report and that we can make an insurance claim on it, I remember the list of numbers I ran last night trying to see how much we would need to get the boat to where we could live on it. I had come up with the figure $2500.00, for lifelines, trampolines, mattresses, fridge, table, etc...

How much will the insurance company reimburse us for that stolen motor? $2600.00

Too strange, too incredible to be a coincidence. 

As much as we have always planned to do this, we have sunk all our savings into this boat and with members in our family being openly opposed to us living on a boat, it's hard not to have doubts. When your mother says it breaks her heart to think of us making our children live on that boat, it's very difficult to stand strong in your convictions. 

I'm not sure if any of our plans are actually going to work out. We may move onto the boat and hate it, but at least then we can say we gave it a shot. 

But I do know God has guided our lives this far, He has always made His will known by definitely closing doors to certain paths and making the way clear for others. And when the exact amount of money needed to get the boat live-aboard ready is so randomly provided, I can't help but see an open door.