Thanks for taking the time to read my request. Simply put, my wife and I need about $900 to get into an apartment that we’ve been approved for, and 400 to make our car payment. But how we got here is a story, one you may find interesting.
I lived in Asheville, North Carolina when I first met my wife Elizabeth. I had lived there for about 20 years, having arrived more or less by accident after leaving Massachusetts to do some exploring. I had an undiagnosed mental illness, and couldn’t keep my life together. I went through two marriages, had two children, and failed at many jobs.
Over time, I got treatment for my illness, and met Elizabeth. She brought me to Christ, and since then I’ve been doing better than ever in my life. I’ve been steadily employed for five years, and just a few months ago got recruited for a job that pays more than I’ve ever made.
In late 2020, I applied for a job in technical support with a well known and very excellent web hosting company in Virginia. The stipulation was that I had to relocate to the area in which the company was based. I didn’t know the area, but we were a one income family, so we took a place that seemed affordable in Norfolk. We knew nothing about Norfolk, Virginia, and that was our first mistake.
The section of Norfolk we moved to was unpleasant. I say this because any other definition would involve words not appropriate to this forum. It was gang territory, and our time there was marked by gunshots in the night, murders almost weekly, and ultimately my wife and I being beaten by a coked-up woman on the stoop of our own apartment. All while barely making enough to survive.
When I got recruited for my current job in technical support, I became able to work from anywhere there’s an Internet connection. So we decided to leave Norfolk. We had a place lined up, but our 21 year old high-functioning autistic daughter procrastinated finding her own place, and so two days before the move we canceled our plans and told the property manager in Norfolk that we wanted to renew the lease, and paid the rent for February.
The property manager took a few days to get back to us, during which time our daughter found a home of her own. But when he did, he told us that he had already taken a deposit on the apartment, and we had to leave. So, on my next payday, we rented a van, packed everything up and headed back to Buncombe County, North Carolina, back to the mountains and the people that smile and wave and don’t shoot each other.
The move took almost all my paycheck, and cost more than we expected. We had planned to stay in a motel we know of that has reasonable weekly rates with free food, where I can work my job, but we didn’t have enough left after the move for the weekly rate. We’ve paid for what we can afford, but that only covers us for one more night. We need about $840 for two weeks for us and our dog and two cats to stay in the motel, but we also have an apartment lined up that we can move into as soon as we have $900, if no one else takes it first. We’ll take whichever we can get. Once I get my next check we’ll be good again.
So here we are, asking for about $900 to move in to an apartment, and if another $400 was added to help make our car payment that would be even more of a blessing. Thank you for taking the time to read this, and may God bless everyone who even scans this page.