Our Home Story

 

When I started this blog, one of the very first things I wanted to share with my readers is the wonderful story of how we purchased our home. I am a Pastor’s daughter and our family moved to this tiny little town when I was in first grade. My siblings and I walked to school every day, it was right around the block from where we lived. Every day for 11 years I walked by an old house on the corner with a round door, chipped paint, a crumbling porch. My senior year of high school my Dad asked me to clean for Marian, the elderly lady that lived in that old house. He had been visiting her and taking her to the doctor, getting her mail and just being a servant like my Dad always is. So I listened to Marian’s stories as I cleaned her home and admired all the character it had.

 

Four years later I graduated from college, married my high school sweetheart and we moved back to our hometown. Time passed and I learned that Marian’s son Clark had moved in and begun to renovate her home, but was unable to finish for different reasons. He found out that I loved his Mom’s house, so he threw out a number. I tried EVERY possible way…but it was just out of our price range. And I cried and cried. A few months went by and he gave us a lower number. Again, too high. So I cried again. I remember laying in bed in our tiny rental one night, tears rolling down the sides of my face. I took my desire for this home and I placed it in God’s hands.

 

Christmas of 2011, Clark dropped his asking price to less than half of what he had originally wanted. “Your Dad did so much for my Mom, and you love the home so much, I just want you guys to have it.” When I hung up the phone, yes, I cried! But this time, tears of joy. Needless to say, we now live in that home on the corner. I still wake up and look around and feel like it’s a dream. It has been a long road, a lot of work and a whole lot of patience, but I am so thankful that I finally decided to trust God’s timing. I stopped trying to force things to go my way. I am so thankful for my Dad, and how he served the Lord, never knowing God would use that in the future.

 

I want to encourage anyone out there reading this to trust God’s timing. If He closes a door, He will open another. Sometimes what we think is best is no where near the amazing plan that God has for us if we would only trust Him. When you enter my home, you’ll see a sign right above the closet door that reads, “Welcome to our Home…the hand of the Lord hath done this.” Isaiah 41:20. While I was praying for a home, the Lord showed me this passage in Isaiah. I wanted to share it here –

 

“When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst, I the Lord will hear them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them. 

I will open rivers in high places, and fountains in the midst of the valleys: I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water. 

I will plant in the wilderness the cedar…and the oil tree; I will set in the desert the fir tree, and the pine, and the box tree altogether:

That they may see, and know, and consider, and understand together, that the hand of the Lord hath done this, and the Holy One of Israel hath created it.” Isaiah 41:17-20

 

After I read that passage, I knew what God was trying to teach me. When the situation seems impossible, when your circumstance looks hopeless, when everyone tells you it can’t be done, leave it in God’s hands and rest in Him. Why? So that you can look back like me, and through tears you can see, and know, and understand that it was the hand of Lord that took care of you and brought you through. I believe with all of my heart that God wants to use our home to touch lives. My prayer is that our story will encourage you, uplift you, and give you the strength to trust in Him.

Thanks for reading,