...the waiting....

The worst part of life for a planner is the unknown.

Uncertainty looks like restlessness.

We are still no closer to any type of certainty with our housing situation. [If you don’t know what I’m talking about, catch up here and here]. The rental market here is super bleak for larger homes right now because the seasonal PCS [an official military transfer wherein a servicemember moves their whole family to a new duty station] hustle and bustle for the military has been going hard all summer. Available homes come up and are taken just as quickly as they appear. Homes large enough to hold our family are already super few and far between… add the competitive rental market and I’m really…. really anxious about finding something should we need to move quickly.

In terms of qualifying for a mortgage: our scores are okay, but at the end of 2025, our bank changed the platform they use for online banking and bill pay. I set up all the autopayments again, but I misunderstood the timing and 2 of the bills skipped a billing cycle. This was right in the thick of the holidays (and working with BAM), so it was a few months before I actually realized what was going on (which of course caused a ripple affect of making the subsequent months technically “late” even though they received a payment). We corrected it, got caught up, reset the autopay, and it’s been paid as usual ever since.

Unfortunately, for a VA loan, even ONE missed payment requires manual underwriting and lengthy explanation. Multiple missed payments are a non starter.

We’re writing dozens of letters for goodwill deletion requests to the companies involved, with all of our fingers crossed.

We keep paying rent and are giving our landlord lots of space as her husband’s funeral was last week. The realtor who knows her is doing the same… keeping her ears open but giving her space.

A mortgage broker told us we’d qualify in January providing no more late payments hit our reports and we keep our credit going the way it’s been going. We’re hoping she just rides month-to-month until then in lieu of everything she’d have to do to sell the house on the market and we’d have to find somewhere else to live (and it would have to be into another rental).

I might rather put my shit in a storage center and live in a hotel or short term rental than move into a whole other rental house for just a few months!

So in the pregnant pause of waiting, I clean. I’ve cleaned out cabinets, donated stuff to thrift, paring down. I’ve made a daily habit of logging on to our online bank every morning at 6 am to make sure there’s no autopay or payment that is waiting to surprise us; just watching every dollar like a hawk.

It’s way too hot and humid to take this restlessness out on my garden lately, but that’s up next. Ripping out spring plantings that have been exhausted of their fruits. Weeding and tidying. Removing plant stakes and cages.

I’ve looked at local jobs, but not knowing where we’ll be living in 30, 60, or 90 days is making it nearly impossible to pin down a reasonable geographic region for said job. Everything feels like it’s on pause… and for a planner, this is a constant state of anxiety and fear. For a gardener, a season of grief where I will pass on putting in fall plants for fear of cursing any hope of ever seeing them bear fruit. For a mother, a season of fear not knowing where our children and my mother will be laying their heads next month.

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Before we got this news, months ago, we had planned a little short getaway for the last week in July. Booked and paid for. Just a brief drive up to Harper’s Ferry, a little balm for my Appalachian soul and a break from the daily grind. My husband scheduled that week of PTO back in January and he desperately needed a break. I’m worried about his stress levels.

When everything happened with the house, he immediately said we should cancel. I checked, and what we had already booked was non-refundable. I said let’s go. We can just hole up in the cabin and get a break. So we did.

We walked up the big hill, straight up the side of the mountain, on the Appalachian Trail that cuts right through the middle of town. We stood in a blackberry patch and breathed in some mountain air while picking a big bucket of plump, juicy fruit with stained fingers. We held some space for something other than the next task on the task list. It was nice to have a change of scenery, but the broad expanse of Unknown now stretches before us in perpetuity. On our way home, we swung through DC and took our youngest to see the original Star Spangled Banner— the giant flag displayed at the American History Museum that was the very one that Francis Scott Key spied through the haze of smoke and flash to see that “our flag was still there”. I wanted her to see it with her own eyes.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for every one of you who has contributed to our GoFundMe as we sit in limbo like this. You have given us some peace of mind as we wait to see what lies next for us. Our family has drawn closer through this; even our seven-year-old brought me a cup of change from her room to contribute to the house fund (I redirected it to her piggy bank). I know we’ll be okay at the end of it all, but I somehow sense and fear that life is going to get very uncomfortable for our family before too much longer.

I’ll keep you updated, and as always, I remain yours in solidarity,

My name is Melissa Corrigan, and I’m a freelance writer/thought sharer/philosopher in coastal Virginia. I am a mom, a wife, a veteran, and so much more. I deeply enjoy sharing my thoughts and receiving feedback that sparks genuine, respectful conversation.

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