Mysterious Ways

My lesson was canceled for today due to a windstorm and the highest level of fire danger. We are staying put and guarding our homes. We are not as vulnerable as my trainer’s place (which is further out) but we do have a fire hazard next door to us. 

The house next door was sold four years ago, but health and family issues of the new owner kept her from occupying it. As you can imagine, it is extremely overgrown around the house (we let our horses graze the pasture and another neighbor cuts it for hay.) 

Though we each have 10-14 acre lots. The actual homes were built very close to each other. We have a gate between the two that we used to go back and forth to visit one another. 

This year we talked about our daughter renting part of the house and caretaking it, and she asked us to do that, but it took until this week to hammer that out and get keys. Yesterday, my husband went over with the tractor and started to mow through it, but the weeds are higher than me, and you have to be really careful not to mow down spigots and other items hidden in the grass. (We had to talk with the former owners to find the appropriate locations of the structural items.)

There have already been some casualties, clay pots, but nothing too bad. Our tractor overheated with the work and the actual heat of the day, almost 100 yesterday, but he was able to get a good part of it done between our homes and in front of hers. Unfortunately, there is a half dead tree that hangs onto her roof and would present a huge danger if fire ever reaches the property. 

The inside of the house was in decent shape, but there had been obvious break-ins. Three windows are cracked and we found three doors wide open where cats had gotten in and killed birds. It appears the initial break in was through a window that was left unlocked. You can see a muddy footprint on the table underneath it. 

It’s going to be a lot of work, but it will be nice to have daughter and grandson next door for maybe the next year, longer if we’re lucky, and it will be good for the neighborhood to make it less of a fire danger. I don’t know if she will come and live in it or sell it. Time will tell. The downstairs has its own separate apartment, so they can both live in it, if that’s what she chooses. (She says that’s what she wants to do, so that is what we’re operating from.)

She is lucky (and so are we) that there were not permanent squatters. Through the years we had run off people who would go back there and park, but it’s impossible to know what happens at night when we’re sleeping. Our daughter will be installing Ring cameras, first thing and we turned on the porch lights to signal it is no longer abandoned. 

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Speaking of my daughter, the divorce was finalized in July and he remarried the next day. For me, that is a relief. It shut the emotional door. While, of course, I’m sad it happened, I realize how intricately our lives are intertwined with the grandson we all love, and my only concern now is that they ALL do well. I pray that each one of them heals, finds happiness and creates loving homes for the children. So far, that seems to be happening. 

It is not a coincidence that the keys to the house next door arrived on—guess what day…?  Yes, the exact day the divorce was finalized. She said they were in the mail two months before, but she actually sent them days before the finalization and a mysterious big, HEAVY package showed up at our gate. We didn’t know who it was from, and were a little scared to open it, but when we did, it was full of children’s books and keys. It was further confirmation to me (and my daughter) that everything is in God’s hands, and He works in mysterious ways.