God has provided

“Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”
‭‭Ephesians‬ ‭3:20-21‬ ‭

These verses sum up our life up very well. It didn’t come without massive hardship we were completely inadequate for, lots of tears, anxiety, and missing people from back in Iowa, but God has used these hardships to shape us. Our trust in His provision has grown. When we look at the mess our world is in, it’s easy to be anxious, but we can trust bc we’ve seen God provide in ways we couldn’t have made up. We left Iowa in Sept. 2020 after returning from a camping trip out west. It was like a food elimination diet followed by reintroducing that food and it going really bad. My body crashed and God had made a series of things fall into place to leave on our mold avoidance journey. As we have gone through this journey, it became clear that moldy buildings and humidity were not the main things to avoid, but it was the outdoor toxin associated with sewer and septic. We’ve often noticed it around interstate interchanges, exits, and over passes too. We healed enough while in Florida last year that I decided to take back my strong stance of I’m not well enough to get pregnant, and Samuel is the product of that decision. We settled into a house for about five months around his birth, and then he started reacting to the house so we’ve been back on the road for a couple months now. I always feared having to do this with him because he was so terrible in the car at first, but he’s gotten really good at traveling. He usually rides three hours very well, and he doesn’t get really upset until closer to four or after the third in and out. We can’t travel the way Wesley and I did before he was around but we are able to travel. We decided to try out another part of Oklahoma, and have found our preferred part of the state. It’s green, hilly, pastures, trees, few row crops, less biosludge use, and more rain so that we can grow things when we get to that point. We’ve tried hotels out in multiple different cities in the tri-state area. It’s a gorgeous place to be. I had this wild idea that we should go check out Kentucky’s horse country because it would be mostly pastures, and then work our way over to the East Coast again possibly checking out the Carolinas this time. What we discovered is southern Missouri doesn’t have all that many hotel options and that our travel days would end up being longer than the boy was going to be happy so we decided against that for now.

One of Wesley‘s clients from his business has been wanting to hire him on full-time since December. We turn down their first offer, but after some changes in leadership, Wesley was offered the infrastructure manager position. The cool part about being a contract worker is he was able to try that role out for a couple weeks before the negotiations for him coming on full-time started, and he and the company could try each other out in that role. He is finishing up his last contract from his business right now and then we should be able to settle into him just working for one company. Being back on the road has showed us the need for work simplification without location stability. Juggling multiple clients has been difficult since Samuel was born, but even more so since we’ve been back on the road. This position has more than replaced both of our salaries from Iowa. Wesley was so anxious over killing his career by taking 6 to 9 months off of work to learn to identify different toxins when we first started this journey. We marvel at how God has supplied our need so I could stay home with the boy and not have to figure out how to make me going back to work bc working as a chiropractor certainly doesn’t match our lives.

The other thing that was really important for us is getting back into biblical community. I make friends super easily everywhere we go, but Wesley struggles more with that between work and not being an extreme extrovert. The last 2 months we’ve been able to be back in church almost every Sunday except the one we had to travel. It started with us having to sit in a corner away from people because Samuel would start crying being near people who had the Covid vaccine, but as he’s healed in better air he can now be amongst the people better. It still makes him fussy so I’m hesitant to have people come visit who have been vaccinated without doing our naturopath’s homeopathic remedy lest they go to the time and expense of traveling to see us and he not tolerate them well enough to spend much time with them. Our friend Kayla came and sat by Samuel and I the other day and he started getting fussy, but not screaming, which was a huge improvement. She asked if she could hold him and I let her because I wanted to see what would happen knowing that she was vaccinated. He was fine while she was holding him because she was very engaging, but after she left, he was a bit of a mess until I wiped his exposed skin down with a wet towel. I was happy to see it worked similarly as wiping the boy down after we’ve been in locations too toxic for him.

We’ve been staying in extended stay hotels more since being back in hotels. We stayed in a Townplace early in our journey and a Home2 and Residence Inn last summer. They were really nice in those stages of the journey, but they’ve been absolutely awesome in this season of the journey, esp being we have most of half a beef at my friend Sara’s house since we moved out of our house. We have a small apartment sized fridge with a freezer, a cooktop, grills, and occasionally an oven. It is a really nice thing to get a room that has a bedroom separate from the living area because then Wesley can work in a quiet space instead of a lobby. Finding lobbies clear enough are tough. I think Samuel and I will go check out some apartments this week because we like this area, and we really like the church we went to on Sunday. The area we’re in has lots of wildfire smoke blowing in from NM. It doesn’t feel as good, but not terrible either.

Samuel has grown so much. He was 26.5”, just shy of 15 pounds a few weeks ago. This week his length hasn’t changed, but he’s over 16 pounds now. He’s sure eating more than usual and chonking out to grow up again. He’s very long for his age. He loves to play and smile. He’s such a happier baby since we left the house. I’ve taught him to make farting noises with his tongue and lips to which, Wesley told him that his mother had utterly broken him. ?