It has taken me a while to write a new blog post, which is really not abnormal for me. Sometimes I wait. It isn't for lack of things to write about. Believe me...I am always writing (even if it is in my head and not down on paper or typed on a computer screen).
At any case, it has taken some time to write because there is the sense that once I tell this story, the story of my life with Mr. now, I won't be able to stop. But now, it's really a matter of using this venue to "brag on God". At some point in all our lives, we have to give honor where honor is due. What's more, we have to realize that the One that created us has a definite plan for our lives and it is up to us individually to obey the course of those plans - even when those same plans make little to no sense whatsoever.
My husband and I spent the last few months searching for a home, walking in crazy faith to find that home that would be the place where our children (and perhaps other children that need a safe place and the love we can give) can call home. That home was out there. I knew it, and I wanted my husband to believe with me. It was hard sometimes to get him to see that God had the perfect home for us. It didn't matter if in the natural sense there was no possible way that all the elements would line up, if we had very little to spend on a house, if we had made some mistakes individually and collectively before. There was a home for us, specifically for us, and that house is part of the plan for our lives.
How do you live in the realm of faith? How do you exist in that place where all odds are against you and the truth is hard to see because the facts don't line up? How do you believe God's command to move forward when it makes more sense to stand still and put down tent pegs where you are?
This move toward a home, a territory, a place for us, a generational blessing for these children that are waiting to be born here was not my idea. I was scared to death to step out here. It felt right in my spirit but wrong to my flesh, to my finite mind. It didn't make sense.
But I have learned that few things in life ever do...the things worth stepping out in faith for don't ever make a whole lot of sense.
The day Mr. signed the last line on the documents sealing the deal, the Unites States Government went into shut-down mode. And then everything began to make sense. And then the topic of this first blog post for October 2013 came to mind.
The shutdown that we are not existing in, no matter whose fault it is or for how long, caused many families to be placed in the position of having to wait for the homes that they were seeking government-backed mortgages for. There is no possible way I could have known that. All I knew, all I insisted on when Mr. and I debated back and forth about the wisdom of finding a home RIGHT NOW, is that God said move NOW. The words I kept returning to in my duct-taped Bible were the stories of Abraham moving in faith toward a home he had not seen and did not have a clear picture of and the offspring of Abraham going in to possess the land generations later. There was no such thing as renting the promise land; there was ownership.
The urgency was much bigger than even our parents realized. They wanted to be supportive but did not understand why we were "moving so fast". They wondered if we would bite off more than we could chew in buying a house when our marriage wasn't even a year old.
All I knew was the process of moving forward, and my husband made the decision to do what needed to be done. I have never been more in awe of him than when he finally trusted that God had spoken to me about the next move for our family - even when it didn't make sense. My husband trusted God, but he also trusted me like the husband trusted his wife in Proverbs 31.
God knew that this was shutdown was going to happen. He knew it all the way up until the date of October 1. And the same day that others were shut out of their dreams (even if on a momentary basis), we were able to advance in faith. Our God knows the times and the seasons of this earth; it is up to us that love and believe Him to trust that He can lead us into a goodly land, that He can lead us home.
There is a gray house with blue shutters on a quiet street where we will live. Our children's school is behind the woods that border our property. They will walk to school and have friends in that neighborhood. These children will have the home I wasn't able to have physically, but did have spiritually. Our children are in line for a generational blessing. And really, it isn't about the house at all. It's about the blessing that has traveled down both my husband's and my bloodlines.
But this home is not just for our birth children. There are others that will be impacted by the little gray house with blue shutters and the love emanating from the very walls. There are lives that will be touched by the books written in that house and the pictures painted in that house and the music composed in that house. There are relationships with the God that led us to that house which will be built there. My babies will learn about God in that house, like I learned about God in my grandparents' house 35 years ago.
And to me...that is what the faith was for. That is what the pressing forward toward a dream was for. That is what the true blessing is for.
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