Ransacked…

If you haven’t followed Our Story, you might want to start at the beginning.

I was happier than I had been in a long time while in Florida. My family didn’t have a lot of money either, but money doesn’t matter as much if you aren’t alone. 🙂

One day my entire family (parents, brother, sister and baby girl) headed about an hour away for my dad’s work party. We were going to be late for the party and my mom was not happy. We rushed out the door and didn’t bother picking up our “getting ready to leave” mess.

We spent the day swimming, eating, and riding SeaDoos on the river. It was awesome.

We didn’t arrive home until almost midnight and when we pulled into the driveway we noticed the front door was partially open.

We debated about what we should do, but finally we agreed that we needed to call the police. Within a few minutes the police arrived and entered my parent’s house. They were in the house for what seemed like an eternity.

They finally came out and told us there was no one inside, but that they believed the house had been broken into. They also said something about it being ransacked, but I kind of forgot that part because I was beginning to remember how we left it early that morning.

I’m sure my mother was mortified as we walked though the house. Clothes were everywhere, drawers were opened, the contents of my purse were dumped out on the coffee table and strewn all over the floor.

The problem… we made the mess. We were in such a hurry to leave we were the ones dumping things out, looking for sunglasses and car keys, changing outfits and not picking anything up.

Everyone thought it was funny…. everyone except mom.

Someone had broken into the house, but they never made it past the foyer. My parent’s little 20 pound blind and crippled dog scared off the intruders before they had a chance to find our treasures strewn all over the house.

I made a mental note to never again be so disorganized that my house looked like it had been ransacked while I was away.

A few days before I was scheduled to return to Virginia, Sailor called.

He had good news. We had been offered a house on base! My prayers had been answered. We would be able to live in the small base community. There was a playground and best of all… lots of families with kids! I could not wait to get back and start packing!

A few hours later Sailor called back. Given the type of things that happened to us in the past I figured we lost the house.

There was more good news. Sailor had been accepted into a commissioning program! He would spend the next three years going to college to become a nurse. We would have to pay for school, but the Navy would pay his salary.

I was stunned. Since the day we got married we had been focused on Sailor getting a commission. In fact in the week between Sailor asking me to marry him and us actually getting married, talks of him rejoining the Navy and getting a commission were frequent.

I mistakenly believed that a commission was the only way to solve our financial problems.

Nonetheless Sailor had been selected for this program and we needed to make a decision.

Do we give up the house on base, the job Sailor loved, and the beautiful mountains of West Virginia for a college degree, promotion, and pay raise?