TIMING - PART TWO

 

Timing is Everything – PART TWO – Waiting for GOD’s timing in my life!

1.       Our first child after FIVE YEARS of marriage.  Our second child’s early arrival weighing 8 # 13 oz ten days early.  (I had dreamed he was twins for six months!!)

2.      Sale of our first house after several years of keeping it REALTOR READY with two toddlers and a husband who worked the night shift – on a Land Sale Contract no less.  That is ANOTHER STORY for another time.

3.      Arrival of our third child after THREE “false alarm” trips to the Hospital an hour away!!  How do you have a “false alarm” on your THIRD pregnancy?

4.      Loan closing on our Poughkeepsie house after over a month in WINTER living in a motel room with three kids and a dog!

5.      Occupancy of our San Jose house after two weeks in a motel with three kids and a dog.  Al least the motel had a pool and a Maytag Repairman, who assured me that washers DO EAT sox, hand kerchieves and all sorts of fabric.  I thought it was my imagination and even purchased ”sock matchers” to squeeze both sox into so they would not divorce while spinning in the WASHER!!

6.      Escaping San Jose to run an INN at 5200 feet in the Central Sierras (email me for a copy of THREE WEEKS on a hide-a-bed)

7.      Timing my requests for “handy man assistance” to avoid a divorce!  Sometimes being talented in the building trades is truly a BURDEN, ask Tom.

8.      We had run out of money to throw at the “fixer-upper” with ten septic systems on ten acres.  “Send us a buyer LORD!  became AUCTION IT OFF and pray for enough money to pay everyone off!”

9.      One of the fortuitous timing events was, believe it or not, the two years at the INN when inflation was SO HIGH that all vacations for folks in the Bay Area and the San Joaquin Valley were CLOSE TO HOME!  Good years despite the Jimmy Carter INFLATION = double digit inflation.

10.   Keeping all the creditors happy with regular phone calls / payments for two years.  WHO KNEW that forgiven debt was taxable?

11.   Opportunity Knocks!  To answer YES or NO?  Why RESORT to another business in greater Downtown Strawberry, the mile high hamlet, population under 100 except on Holiday Weekends?  One tenth of the RESORT across the Highway from the INN, but with a 6 day a week Post Office to staff, nine owners to keep happy, paid, and informed, AND a swimming pool! My favorite partner – TOM – had said after San Jose that we would NEVER have another POOL!  Then he had a seizure like reaction to the PVC glue while plumbing in the new sand filter. So the pool could be opened by mid June at the latest!   Enter vacationing sister and her husband, the POOL GUY, who came to our aid, just in time, with the pre-planned vacation!

12.   YEARS later Tom had a Grand Mal seizure after a one mile hike to the dam on PInecrest Lake. WHERE?  Just twenty yards from the end of the paved Herring Creek Lane and in nice SOFT DIRT!!   Kathleen was with us, she called the local ambulance and ultimately we got an excellent neurologist in Modesto to get Tom’s seizures controlled and satisfy DMV so Tom could get his driver’s license back.  TIMING is everything, ask either Kathleen or myself about the multiple scenarios of THAT day.  TIMING!!

13.   Since 13 is our Lucky Number as BOTH of our fathers had Birthdays on the 13^th – different months – I will stop with this case of fortuitous timing.  The sale of our tenth of the Rivers Resort on January 31th 2020 when we officially became HOMELESS!  We were living in the one bedroom apartment plus office overlooking the remodeled POOL.  Tom had retired from his pastorate at the Sonora United Methodist Church seveN years before and was my “can fix anything” handy man AGAIN!  We shoveled snow – 13 feet on the three day weekend in January 2019 – clearing decks with the help of our son Tom and his two kids plus a friend, widening the plowed main road and making two spaces for parking at each cabin.  BY the Fall of 2019 I was dreading the winter.

 

Christmas Eve Day we were presented with a Sale Contract if we would carry a SECOND Trust Deed!  THANK YOU JESUS!  After 26 years, we were not under stress.  Yes, we were homeless, but after Trusting GOD’s Timing for 41 years in business in Strawberry, the opportunity to travel and see places we had rushed by, or flown over, going back and forth to Colorado all those years was a dream come true.

 

Two years later, we are still enjoying the laid back lifestyle and our 24 foot COUGAR.  We are especially thankful for the relatives who seem glad to see us, and give us a place to park, even if it is only one or two nights on their sidewalk, and who come to visit us if we are camped nearby.

The visitors include folks from San Jose Years, Resort Years, skiing years, and of course our kids and brothers and sisters.

 

TIMING is everything, and especially Trusting GOD’s TIMING!!