When the path isn't straight

Last year felt, well, strange. There really is no other word to describe it. Things didn’t work out at all the way I expected.

Things kept going sideways, often neither good nor bad, just sideways.

It wasn’t a good year, but I can’t say it was bad either.

As I was thinking about the past year, I was reminded of a time in our lives when our paths same to be unusual. Opening our store began a series of several years in which we moved around a lot.

My wife’s health kept doing really strange things and between health changes and financial situation changes, we had to keep moving.

We left our home in Colorado Springs and moved to Woodland Park to open our store. Many people commute between Woodland Park and Colorado Springs. With Debi’s illness the daily drive would be too much for her. We needed to remain near the store so our motorhome was a good option.

We had decided earlier that year that it was time to move the business out of our home. At first we were thinking of just finding a warehouse. We needed to be able to set up a breakroom and space for a sofa or bed so that Debi could lay down whenever she needed. Most warehouse spaces would suffice for that. Our realtor suggested we get a storefront with large inventory space as there really isn’t a difference in price. Having a storefront would support walk-in customers and Debi liked the idea of creating a space where she could work with others. Maybe teach a few young people her craft or host group craft sessions.

We started looking at stores in Colorado Springs. We found a really great space in a well trafficked strip mall. The owner was willing to adjust the monthly lease to fit our price range. Unfortunately, what he wanted for an initial down payment was far more than we had in saving.

We were very disappointed.

We decided to take a trip up into the mountains for a day to pray and seek more guidance from the Lord. As we drove through Woodland Park, we joked about how nice the town seemed. We thought it would make a nice place to open a second store in a few years after we get our first one going.

On our way back later that day, we got some food from a drive-through and parked so that we could enjoy the view looking out toward the back of Pikes Peaks. We continued to discuss the town and the future possibilities when it struck us. We turned to each other and simultaneously said “why not open our first store here?”

I called our realtor and drove back through the town looking for any stores available. And found the store that would soon be DCBcrafts.

We quickly moved into our motorhome and started making arrangements to sell our home in Colorado Springs. That was July 6, 2010. A month later, on August 9, we opened our store in Woodland Park.

Things didn’t go quite as planned. I’ve written about what we went through that year after opening the store, so I won’t go into the details here.

We found we needed to leave the motorhome. We found a wheelchair accessible apartment in Divide, but there was a yearlong waitlist. We found an apartment that was just finishing being renovated. It as a ground floor apartment with only a couple of stairs to get into the building. The apartment manager said he could rush the paperwork through, so we made a marathon dash down the mountain to sign the papers. The timing was pretty impeccable because on our way, a repo agent from the bank called to tell us they were on their way up the mountain to get the motorhome. We made an arrangement to give two weeks (actually I asked the gas company to stall that long.)

I argued that it can’t be moved until the gas company disconnects the gas. The repo agent agreed to work out the timing with the gas company.

I called the gas company and said “We need to have the gas disconnected but I’m sure you can’t make it out for a few days.”

She responded, “That’s an odd way of asking, so what’s going on?” I explained the situation. “You are our customer, you tell me what you want me to tell them.”

“Tell them a week.” The property manager had already committed that we could move in Monday, so this would give us plenty of time to get over moved.

“I’ll tell them 10 days”, she huffed.

She wasn’t the only one willing to delay the repo agent if necessary, but the move went without a hitch.

About a month after we moved into the apartment, we received a call from the wheelchair accessible apartment complex. They had reprioritized people with disabilities, and the one year wait had now become a few weeks.

We moved in on Memorial Day weekend. I remember vividly because for the next three months, Dib was barely able to move in her bed. Let alone, go out to the living room.

In early August I was doing some research and found that certain starches can help stabilize energy levels. It dawned on me that we had removed many carbs from our diet in an attempt to eat more healthily at the same time as we opened the store.

“I’m going to the store to buy every form of potato I can find and we are going to load you up with carb!” I told her as I rushed out the door.

Three days later she walked into the living room and sat in her favorite recliner for the first time since we had moved in.

We stayed in Divide for 1 year. In the early part of 2012 we discovered that Debi did better when we traveled higher in altitude. I started to notice when we went to Cripple Creek that she didn’t seem to need her medicines as much. She said she notices the pain goes away as we are driving up the mountain into Cripple Creek, I installed an altimeter app and we set out driving around. “Tell me when you feel changes in your pain.”

After that mapping expedition, we found that her pain went away (as we were going up) or came back (as we went down) at 9300 feet in altitude. Where we lived, Divide, was at 9200 feet.

We decided to move as high as we could go. In Colorado, there are three communities above 10,000 ft, Alma, Leadville, and Blue River (part of the Breckenridge area). The area around Alma doesn’t have medical services, so we checked Leadville first.

There were only 2 houses available to rent. One had a large hole in the roof, the other was structurally sound, but still barely liveable. The realtor said nothing else has even been on the market for some time, so there was little hope of finding anything there. The medical center was pretty small and the roads out of town can be impassable for long stretches during winter. So we had to pass on Leadville.

That left Alma and Blue River, towns on either side of Hoosier pass. To get to the nearest hospital from Alma, you had to cross Hoosier pass, and go through Blue River. Likewise shopping was nearly nonexistent, although Fairplay (near Alma) did have a small grocery store.

Blue River, being in the Breckenridge ski resort area, is very expensive. We found a house there. The landlord was very sympathetic to our problems. Since the house would likely sit empty over the summer anyway, he could work with us 4-5 months over the off-season. We could try to get our online business going again and Breckenridge would be a good place to do computer consulting.

The church we found had a plan to build an online education platform for missions. My experience with education and online systems seemed like a God-send (it went both ways). They had a small amount of funding set aside to start the project. All I needed to do was get a basic demonstration system running.

Unfortunately things didn’t go as planned. One month into the project, we were running into significant bugs in the system. The issues were major design flaws that were being addressed in an upcoming version that would be several months to a year before out. We had no choice but to shelve the project. The added shipping distance made our e-commerce store unworkable too. After a few months, we were forced to move once again.

We started looking in the Alma/airplay area which is on the other side of the continental divide from Blue River. Social services offered to put us up in a hotel. This move went very bad. It took several weeks to find a place, during which time we racked up a whopping $4000 hotel bill. Since we were moving between counties, neither county would accept responsibility for the bill. My paycheck got lost in the mail during all of this confusion too.

As we were going through this, we didn’t know how things were going to work out.

In hind-sight I can see that the paycheck that took 6 weeks to be replaced, actually was the perfect timing for paying the rent and security deposit to get into the house. The landlord agreed to allow us to move in after confirming with the company that the check was indeed in the mail.

The hotel bill in its entirety was written-off because the hotel was being sold.

I’ve written in detail elsewhere so I will just say: this was a six-week nightmare ordeal that was just wiped clean!

We remained in this house for 3 years.

I will never fully understand why we had to move around so much. We seemed to something out of each move. We thought we were moving to Woodland Park to have a successful store, when in reality, that was one off the few counties piloting a long-term care program that would pay me as her caregiver. We moved at the right time to be there to get started on that program.

In hind-sight the stops in Divide and Blue River had specific blessings even though things didn’t last long there.

The lay-over for 6 weeks in the hotel doesn’t really make sense. It seems to be a stop gap to wait until the house in Jefferson was ready. Nevertheless, financially, God wiped that slate as though it didn’t happen. It was terribly hard going through it. I will say that experience taught me about faith, and letting go when things are going the way I expect.

You will never guess where we ended up.

The house we left at the beginning of the story.

We had tried to sell it through a short-sale process. There were some legal issues with the title, that took several years to resolve. During that time it sat in legal limbo.

Through all of those moves it hung over us like a financial albatross. We couldn’t move back into it because of the altitude issues with Debi’s illness. The legal unknowns meant even if we had tried to move back in, we would likely have to vacate again.

Eventually the realtor called to let me know the legal issues had been resolved he recommended we file for bankruptcy, through that process we could reset the mortgage. That year, Debi had started on an experimental treatment that seemed to have stabilized the part of her illness that was effected by altitude.

We took a couple of trips to Colorado Springs to check into the possibility. Even after spending two weeks she wasn’t in a coma, and the legal and financial issues seemed manageable too.

Just to add one more miracle into this, the home inspector was amazed that the copper wiring and plumbing was still in the house. Usually, homes that had been uninhabited within a few months are broken into and stripped off all the copper.

Debi needed to be closer to medical care by this time, so this was a major blessing that everything worked together so miraculously. Debi spent the last 6 months of her life in peace and joy in that house.