By wanting to help, you’ve already helped us a lot. Truly, it’s a huge morale booster. Our journey has been so lonely and isolating; it means so much that others are willing to come alongside us in love.

We are both very independent, “we can do it on our own” type people, so to even put ourselves out here like this is hard. We are far more likely to read judgment into others’ actions and words than is actually being expressed (especially in the case of silence, ha!), so when support is offered to us, it is a precious gift.

It can, admittedly, be an awkward thing. Not sure what to say? Here are some practical things we crave hearing:

• “We are so proud of you guys.”
• “We see the sacrifices you guys have made to keep your family together, and we honor you for that.”
• “There is light at the end of the tunnel. You won’t be in this phase forever.”
• “It’s okay to be needy now. You will one day be able to give to others how you want to.”
• “There must be so much more to this that I don’t understand, but that’s okay. I don’t need to know everything. Can I give you a hug?”
• “You are not failures. This could have happened to anyone.”
• “You did not choose this, but you can grow through it.”
• “What was one really encouraging thing that happened this last week? What is one thing you’re looking forward to next week?”
• “I am thinking of [one specific, concrete act of service, such as bringing a meal over on a certain day]. Would that be helpful?”

We completely understand that you may have the desire, but not the capacity to tangibly help. (Hm, guess what season we might be in?) Please pray for us! Here are some specific requests:

• A quick finish so we can put this project behind us!

• Financial stability through this season. We have been taking measures to cost-cut everyday life expenses, but, for example, we have a major vehicle repair ($3K for brake system on our van) looming on the horizon. Matt just received news that some details of his work will be changing, reducing his income, although he should be up for promotion out of trainee status in several months, which will increase it again.

• Mental, emotional, and physical energy to keep slogging through each day. Normal life takes up 90% of our available drive space; crunching in the time needed to push this house project forward means we drop into bed drained almost every night.

• Relational and emotional stability. It’s been a rollercoaster, you know? Nothing like stress, exhaustion, and fear to bring out the worst in us.

• Togetherness for our family.

• Safety while working on the house.

Join us on Saturdays!

This Saturday, March 8th, we will be tearing out a couple old floors and need all the help we can get.

We are also planning to work at the house regularly on Saturdays and can use a trickle of interested folks to help keep moving the needle forward.

If you desire and are able to, your funding speeds up our timeline to finish this house. $15K is the estimated cost of materials and drywall installation. Anything over that would go toward hiring contractors to speed up the process further.