Hola!
Lo siento!
I’m sorry for my total absence this week. I’m typing these words perched out on a balcony, the only place I can get my internet hot-spot to work. No, we’re not in the Ark, we’re actually in Mexico, on a family trip that was planned ages ago, long before we knew we’d be moving at the same time! As some of you know, our house was delayed in closing, so we moved in with my parents for a week or so, then flew out for this trip, and our house closed a couple days ago, while we were thousands of miles away! So, we’ll move in next week when we return, but the kids and I got really sick right before we left on the trip, so needless to say, between moving, traveling, sickness, and no limited internet connection, I had a few obstacles keeping me from coming here to say, Hola! Come estas?!
We are slowly recovering, and are very grateful for the sea-air and sunshine, which does work wonders. I do hope you are well; and I thank you for your kind encouraging feedback on the Ark story. I hope it’s encouraged you in your own faith-adventure. We’re all on one.
That’s all for now. I’m here to rest and savor time with my family, so I’m going to go do just that. (Those are the cousins above, holding hands in the ocean. Precious bugs!) I just wanted y’all to know I’m still alive, and leave you with these words that have been an encouragement for me lately. Above all the world’s beauty and splendor, above all experiences and encounters, above all perfect circumstances, the presence of the LORD is the only place that satisfies our souls.
Psalm 84
How lovely is your dwelling place,
O Lord of hosts!
2 My soul longs, yes, faints
for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and flesh sing for joy
to the living God.
3 Even the sparrow finds a home,
and the swallow a nest for herself,
where she may lay her young,
at your altars, O Lord of hosts,
my King and my God.
4 Blessed are those who dwell in your house,
ever singing your praise! Selah
5 Blessed are those whose strength is in you,
in whose heart are the highways to Zion.[b]
6 As they go through the Valley of Baca
they make it a place of springs;
the early rain also covers it with pools.
7 They go from strength to strength;
each one appears before God in Zion.
8 O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer;
give ear, O God of Jacob! Selah
9 Behold our shield, O God;
look on the face of your anointed!
10 For a day in your courts is better
than a thousand elsewhere.
I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God
than dwell in the tents of wickedness.
11 For the Lord God is a sun and shield;
the Lord bestows favor and honor.
No good thing does he withhold
from those who walk uprightly.
12 O Lord of hosts,
blessed is the one who trusts in you!
Thank you for reading.
The Ark (last part!)
… of course I was thrilled about the Ark. I was jumping up and down inside, so amazed at God’s grace and power.
But I didn’t want to tell anyone. Why?
Because then they would say, “Oh fun! Show me the link to the house!”
And then I would cringe. Because I didn’t want to show anyone that the house was … big. I didn’t want anyone to see the price.
I was afraid of being judged.
There you have it. My pride. I took pride in being the frugal girl. In living simply. In having my small, 110-year-old house. Living in a little old house looks godly. Living in an enormous house looks worldly. What would people think when the Frugal-living girl buys a (to me) super expensive house?!!
Yes, we could afford it without reducing our giving-amount at all. Yes, this was clearly the house God was leading us to. But I couldn’t give those disclaimers to everyone. Some people would just look, and think I’d sold out and quit being a Jesus-follower and think this was just about me wanting to live in a big house.
I would avoid giving any details about the house. I didn’t want anybody to look it up and draw conclusions about us. There wasn’t time to tell the whole story to every random person, so I just figured I’d keep the whole thing quiet. But as I prayed, I kept sensing the Father saying,
“Don’t fear people. Don’t be ashamed of what I’m doing.”
I know it sounds silly, but this was the hardest part. I’d been so open about our journey of leaving our dream-home, I was afraid people would see this as “going back” to our old life. And it was anything but! This was a new level of trust, of surrender, of living with hands wide open. I honestly believe this house and property will be a blessing to uncounted many. It will be A Refuge In The Storm. God has already kept me back from taking claim to this house as if it’s my own. It’s His. In every way. Every square inch is His and I’m to be His steward of it for as long as He wills.
So there it is.
Through this process, God has brought the story of Noah to life in a whole new way. I have never identified so much! I keep thinking how he must have worried what other people thought, how it probably seemed like a “waste of money” to build that enormous boat, how he must have felt crazy some (most?) of the time. But he followed through, it came to pass, and the Ark was indeed A Refuge In the Storm.
I have no idea what the whole story will be. I don’t know what the storm is, or exactly how this house will be used. It might not even be clear in my lifetime. I’m content not having all the details, I’m just grateful for the peace of knowing this next step. We move in April 11th. I’m keeping the specific location private, not because I’m afraid you’ll judge me 😉 but because it needs to be private. Thanks for respecting that.
For now, I just want to say: Whatever God is calling you to do: believe Him! Don’t fear others’ opinions, their judgement, or your own lack of resources. Whole-hearted surrender brings incredible blessing and opens the path for His dreams to be brought to fruition in our lives. Praying for the grace to trust Him in the days ahead, each step of the way.
{Thanks so much for reading.}
The Ark (Part 3)
… Okay let’s finish this story!
So, in January, we were generously given a raise by the elders of our church. At first was uncomfortable with receiving this increase. This was God’s money! Plus, we were fine. We weren’t starving, and we literally had no needs. We are clothed, we have cars, we have plenty. But again, as I went to the Lord in prayer, I kept sensing Him saying to receive because this was part of the journey. We had become comfortable with being conduits of His love and resources in teeny tiny amounts, and He wanted us to be willing to be conduits of His love and resources in larger ways now.
Plus, to my amazement, because we had whittled down our monthly budget to such a small amount, this “extra” now put us in a completely different position to look for the Ark. I still didn’t have a $ amount, but I began to see that this was all part of God making the impossible possible.
Then I accidentally sold our house.
Ha! Yes, that’s right. This is the part of the story where I say, “Wives, don’t do this.” Jeff laughed so hard saying,
“You sold our house out from under me!” Haha.
Actually all I did was click that teeny tiny button on Zillow that says “Make Me Move.” I was praying and fasting, and the idea came to mind so I did it.
Yeah, like, I did it without asking Jeff. (Cringe face.)
Thankfully, he laughed later and said it was fine, but we received a FLOOD (ha!) of calls with interested buyers. We agreed to just show the house to two people who seemed most eager. The second one came and cried when she saw the house she loved it so much, and offered full price. Jeff agreed, we accepted.
So, um … now what?
The same day we received the offer, a house popped up on the market. I had no filters on my search at all, but it caught my eye because it was 4.5 acres and it looked like …
… an ARK.
The front angled out like the bow of a boat and there were decks all the around. I looked closer. 4.5 acres. Two full living spaces. Huge shop. Wood stove. On a well.
With a pond and creek.
Oh good grief!
My eyes widened. Was this for real? And, with the more-than-expected equity from our house-sale, it would be the exact amount we’d already been approved for, with our new income.
We went to see it and it rang so clearly in my heart, “This is it.” The kids, of course, were ecstatic. We’d seen some absolute hovels of houses, and after seeing all those dives they couldn’t believe we were actually considering a house that they LIKED! Haha, and that’s how I felt. I was like, “Wait what?! This house is actually pretty! I didn’t expect pretty to be part of the process.” I thought it would be like an old school, or a warehouse, or some weird thing like that, I didn’t expect it to be clean and lovely! Of course I would never have picked green countertops or some of the other stylistic parts of the house, but I didn’t give a rip about those things.
This was THE ARK!
Of course I was thrilled at seeing this God-thing come to pass. It was so remarkable I could barely believe it, but then would come the uprooting of more heart-issues. God doesn’t waste anything, and He used this blessing to show me lingering sin in my heart …
Bet you can’t wait for that! Haha. 😉 More soon!
The Ark (Part 2)
{Continuing the story from yesterday! So sorry to keep you waiting!}
… So we prayed and asked God to show us what to look for. Altogether we sensed 7 things, but they came one at a time. I think if He’d showed us everything all at once, we’d have laughed in disbelief and abandoned the whole adventure altogether.
First, He had to help me abandon an incomplete view of what it means to be faithful financial stewards.
See, I’m the Faithfully Frugal girl. I wrote the book, people! And I wholeheartedly agree with every word in there, but I hadn’t realized how much I’d equated frugality with godliness.
With good reason. Nine times out of ten, erring on the side of frugality is going be a safe bet. We’re a nation of over-spenders, often over-indulging ourselves while refusing to help our brothers and sisters with real needs. God had done such a dramatic work in my heart regarding finances and frugality, that I was zealous for frugality.
But in October, God began revealing to me, that although my passion for frugality was well-intended, He wanted to take me deeper. He wanted to teach me to the way of the Kingdom, living as a child of God.
In October I distinctly heard, “I no longer want you to make decisions based on money.”
Say what?! Then how on earth would I make them? Yes, we gave generously overseas and to our local church, but in my day-to-day decision-making, I almost always made decisions simply based on what was cheaper. At restaurants, gifts, groceries, choices of all kinds. My go-to, default, decision-making process was almost always What’s cheaper? or What’s the better deal?
That’s fine for some things, but it’s terribly incomplete. It often isn’t motivated by love, faith, or the gospel. It’s motivated by a passionate commitment to spending as little as possible.
Again, that might be a good place to begin, but I sensed the Father saying from now on He wanted me to confer with Him about every single financial decision, and trust His leading (with my husband, of course) and buy or not buy what He wanted, regardless of price.
Ok, this might seem like no big deal to you, but this was a HUGE SCARY DEAL to me. I kept thinking, “This is fine and dandy for those people with plenty of money, but what about for us?! We can’t afford to be willy nilly with our finances!”
I could almost hear Him laughing. Of course this wasn’t “willy nilly” … this was learning to live more fully in relationship with the Father, not with a commitment to a certain financial principle. I felt so scared to step outside my comfort zone in this way. But you know what? I did it and …
It was awesome! I found myself being so much more generous, buying gifts for people because I genuinely thought it would be their very favorite, not just because it was on sale. I had so much fun dreaming up ways to bless others. I found myself feeling so FREE!
And to my everlasting amazement, of course, we never lacked. 😉
In the midst of this, when I asked God to show me what price range to search for as we looked for the Ark, I kept sensing,
“No. I don’t want you to have a house in a certain price range, I want you to have the house I have for you.”
Um… ok?
But I had no idea what to look for!
So again, we prayed, and slowly but surely, over the next 4 months, seven things kept coming back to our hearts & minds.
- Big. (Not real specific.)
- 4 acres. (Real specific!)
- Two living spaces so that our housemates could come with us.
- An outbuilding of some sort.
- On a well.
- Wood-stove.
- With a water source (pond, creek, etc.) on the property.
So…can you see why I was tempted to laugh in unbelief?? Um…have you SEEN house prices in the Portland area? Sky high! Have you SEEN the million-dollar price-tags on anything that would have all 7 of these items? Seriously I felt like Sarah when she was told she’d have a baby at 90-years-old!
But, the Ark impression kept coming back in alarming frequency. I’ll spare you all the specifics, but it seemed everywhere I turned there was a reference to Noah and the ark, specifically Jesus’ references to this in the gospels.
But again, would money rain down from heaven? How on earth would this happen?
More tomorrow! Thanks for reading.