It happened...

The inevitable finally occurred.

The freak out.

The "what-in-the-world-are-we-doing" freak out. I'll give you two guesses as to which one of us had the panic attack.

If you said "Christa" for both answers you'd be correct. Your prize? The satisfaction of being right of course.

Stress has been slowly ebbing and flowing around our family. Everything seems to be feast or famine. Work. Church. Friends. Parenting. Tests. The House. Some days, everything is great but on others, everything has gone to hell in a hand basket. That's part of life and we know that. And we knew the freak out was an inevitable event, it was just a matter of time.

But so far, when we've been asked how things are going (especially with the house) we've been pretty positive. A few of our friends hear the "eh, its a mess" comments but we've tried to stay positive. The whole, put on a happy face thing.

Well, Saturday morning, I lost it.

Addison was at a friend's house (weird that I can already say that) and so we both went to the house to get some work done. And within 3 minutes of being in the house, I was having a full fledged panic attack. My chest was pounding, tears were streaming, I couldn't focus and I couldn't stop pacing the house. I couldn't calm down enough to pick anything up and make any progress. I just kept thinking about how much of a mess it was and how far we had to go.

Paul has been working basically two full time jobs. 40 hours at our day job and then another 30+ at the house. When I have these moments about the house he takes it very personal. And I don't blame him. But it's not personal. It has nothing to do with Paul or what he's accomplished. In fact, if it wasn't for him we'd be up a creek, not only without a paddle but probably without a boat.

I finally calmed down, picked up a trash bag and a broom and started cleaning. Paul repaired the front door latch and deadbolt and we took some deep breaths. Sunday night, I tossed and turned, got out of bed and kept busy (painting my toenails, washing my hair). I so desperately wanted to feel like we had made a mistake. I was scared, I was on the verge of another panic attack in the middle of our little bathroom apartment floor.

I wanted to have an internal conversation where I would determine that we had made the biggest mistake of our lives. That this was a disaster and that we needed to find a way to get out of it.

And while my mind was racing and I was upset and worried, I couldn't convince myself that this was a mistake at all.

While we are behind and money is getting tighter and tighter, this is the house that I want to live in. This is the house that I want to throw parties in and have slumber parties at. It's where, one day I want to host Christmas or Thanksgiving for my whole family. This is our house.

And it wasn't a mistake.

Even if we can't do it. If we fail, if we run out of money, or run out of time we'll just have to figure it out.

It's ours and it is going to be done one day. And when that one day is here, we'll be thankful we saw it through.