It’s time for another update.

Last time we spoke, I was having a seemingly mild roommate situation that appeared to have blown over. Wellll the storm was only just beginning to brew, as it turns out. If you follow me on Instagram, you may have noticed my hashtag eviction weekend. It’s time I spill the juicy details…

First of all, regarding the post title, for awhile there it seemed like things would just not go right for us here. Besides the icy roommate drama, Fort Collins went through a literal cold front last week. The first day I received an ominous text I ended up biking home in the 55 degree rain. Since then, it hasn’t stopped raining daily. Coincidence? (“You know Joincidence is coincidence with a J!”)

I will try to spare you all of my thoughts and feelings on the issue so as to not make you think we haven’t been relying on the Lord through this situation and trying to display Jesus’ love as much as possible. In fact, the opposite has absolutely been my number one desire, and I hope that comes across.

So, on Thursday afternoon last week, Whit received a text from one of our roommates. To give some background, we were (note the past tense) renting a room in an apartment close to campus from a sweet Christian girl and her parents. Because of city laws, the apartment does individual leases for each room, instead of renting the entire apartment out. Each room has its own key and everything; it’s very distinct.

There didn’t appear to be a ton of communication beforehand because our renter and the roommates we’d be living with, but that seemed pretty normal to me, as situations can differ in subletting arrangements. Sometimes the roommates help find a subleaser, and sometimes they aren’t involved. It’s weird no matter what because one person is responsible for paying their part of the rent or finding a subleaser, and the roommates are left to live with the people that end up filling the room, but it’s not to their benefit to help find a subleaser because they aren’t responsible for the rent, especially when there are individual leases. You know the drill.

Another factor is that our sweet renter was kind and didn’t make us go through the apartment re-let process, so we just sublet from her and didn’t have to pay the 80% of one month’s rent (!!!!) fee associated with changing a lease over if you go through the apartment complex.

Anyways, we met one of the roommates the first couple of days we were there. She was super sweet and showed us around, and we really enjoyed talking with her. Her other roommate came back into town after a couple days, and seemed very cool as well. Her boyfriend lives with her and we liked that Whit wasn’t the only dude in the house. Now I can get to the drama!

Note: This is BY FAR the most dramatic situation that I’ve ever been directly affected by. Same for Whit. If you know us AT ALL you know that we are not drama people, whatsoever. *Foreshadowing*

When we met this other roommate, she was excited over the fact that we like to recycle (lol, I love Colorado), and she mentioned that she had heard we have a cat, and that she hoped her allergies would be okay, because she used to need allergy shots. Tela had waltzed into her room when it was cracked earlier that day (I tried to not let her, but I didn’t want to close her door – because of the private locks on them – and I also didn’t want to snoop in her room to go grab the cat), so I told her that we would try to keep Tela in our room, and asked if we could close her room door so that Tela doesn’t sneak in again. She seemed cool with it all, and she and her boyfriend hung out in the living room the rest of the night studying Spanish.

The next day Whit gets a text from her saying that she is SO SORRY but she had a really bad allergic reaction to the cat, and broke out in hives. When we got home, we also found a note from her. She was so so sorry, and just didn’t know she couldn’t live with a cat, but it was really bad and she wasn’t able to get any sleep the night before. We thought it was a little odd because she was SO FINE the night before, even though she was in the living room with the animal and had been home all day… I hate that people are so allergic to cats (WHY GOD WHY?!) but we’ve never seen anyone have a bad reaction unless they are in direct contact with Tela, or in the same room with her. And we’ve never seen someone have a severe reaction like hives.

Anyway. We expressed our sorrow over the situation, vowed to keep Tela in our room for the rest of the summer, and expressed our apologies. We continued to LYSOL WIPE the entire living room and kitchen where Tela might have rubbed up against any baseboards, kitchen stools, or TV stands. (The room clearly hadn’t been swept in weeks so it was pretty nasty, just so ya know.) We also swept, and asked if there was a vacuum, if we could borrow one, or if we could chip in for one. (My assessment is that was the appropriate, thoughtful, and prompt response.) Roomie seemed thankful but not completely over it. (FYI Whit was positive at this point, but I was skeptical… I know how girls can be, and I wasn’t buying her (false?) appreciation.)

The next day (Friday), THE SAME TIME in the afternoon, I get a call from the girl we rented from. I text Whit that we have another situation. I was worried before that we might have to move out because the apartment doesn’t allow animals and we could get fined for having the cat, and sometimes people resolve things by going behind people’s backs and reporting them to the authorities instead of talking it out. Well, the call from our friend said that the apartment notified her that maintenance had entered her (our) room for…. something {unknown}…. and somehow figured out that there were two people living there (?) and that we have until Monday to find a new place to live or else we face a huge fine. Note that they said nothing about the cat (who was very obviously in the room) and somehow discerned that we were two people in the room, even though nothing in our room (except maybe our closets? if you SNOOPED around) appeared that way. And the fact that our roommate is living with her boyfriend but they said nothing about that to her?

I started freaking out (on the inside) and immediately starting a Craigslist search to find a new place to live, just in case. I decided to not let my emotions well up and asked my team for prayer. They knew that the day before we had roommate issues, and I explained what happened and they encouraged me that God would provide and that it would all work out because He is in control. I went home early so Whit and I could deal with the situation, and asked for a meeting that night with our renter and her parents, who are co-signers on her lease.

Oh – by the way – our roomie who was allergic to the cat just so happened to have just skirted town for a weekend-long camping trip. Coincidence? You tell me.

The next morning me and Whit and the parents on the lease went to the apartment’s leasing office. The poor girl working at the desk had to deal with the four of us pleading for a little bit of grace and trying to leverage our short stay and offering of more money, but she would. not. BUDGE. on the rules. They don’t do subleasing (whoops!! that was our collective fault), don’t allow two people in one room (even if they’re a 26/28 year old married, VERY clean, Christian couple here for seven weeks – yeah, I know), and wouldn’t allow us to remain on property over the weekend because of the combination of those two. OBVIOUSLY we did not bring up the fact that we also had a small kitty living with us.

Oh, that maintenance call? She couldn’t explain why it happened. Also, a really REEEEdiculous part of this is that while we were meeting, she called and asked her manager about the maintenance call, and then when we asked to speak to her about not being allowed to stay for the weekend (remember the manager had left a voicemail saying that we had until Monday? She then on the phone told her employee that we had to leave immediately – what??), she told us that her manager “is not available for contact until Monday.” WHAT THE HECK YOU JUST talked to her! I started to lose it a little at that point.

All that to say, we *could* have worked out a weird, expensive, inconvenient situation where we continued to live in that apartment complex, but instead we decided to just be done with it and move out.

So, whether or not it was our roommate who made us homeless with no other options and technically evicted, we had to move this weekend. 😀

She swore that she didn’t say anything to them, and I don’t know if I believe her or not, but something iffy definitely went down. She did mention a falling out with the roomie and desire to not live with strangers in her home over the summer so it’s understandable where she was coming from – if she went through with the action, not understandable to go behind our backs. Regardless, we forgive her or don’t blame her or whatever, but we had a super crappy Friday and Saturday and literally the worst thing that’s ever been done to us was done. Sooooo there’s that.

BUT the good news is that GOD IS GOOD and totally provided for us ASAP. We no joke contacted close to fifty people to try to find a place, and heard back from two. One of the ladies showed us the room in her rental house a few hours after we contacted her on Saturday, and said that we could move in THAT NIGHT. She didn’t even require any paperwork from us because she loves our organization and has family who work for another Christian organization! Is that God’s sovereignty or what? She pro-rated the rent and gave us a fully furnished room. We moved in the next day (our renter and her parents helped us move!! They are awesome!) and so far get along just dandy with our really chill girl upstairs roommate (who we share a bathroom with and who has a cat) and even more chill downstairs dude roommate (who has the most bear-like but loveable dog).

In the end we made it through and are thankful for no more moving for awhile! And I think we’ll end up paying less money overall this summer? so that’s an unexpected bonus. Our old sheets (full size) didn’t fit on the new (queen size) bed, but who cares! We have a place to live. I’m bummed that we won’t get to know the other girls and guy, because I think it would have been really fun to hang out with them. At least now we’re living with people who aren’t actively or unactively working against us, so praise God for that. And Praise God for you reading this post and caring if you did so. Thanks!! :*