I’ve been a little busy lately. My family has spent the summer going on job interviews, going to multiple church camps, football camps, and VBS. We then started the process of packing and moving while my husband started working in our new town. We had spent months looking for a house but it took a little longer than expected. We ended up having to look for houses over FaceTime. We finally found one but they needed a mid-August closing date and to lease it back until late August. Please hear, we couldn’t move in until after school was set to start.
So my husband went ahead and moved most of his things with him to a family’s house that he could stay with while we packed up our things in Katy. Then, a few weeks later, we all moved and stayed with a new friend for the week while our more permanent temporary housing situation was being vacated. After that week, we moved into a family’s barndominium for the month while we waited to close and get to move in. School would be starting so we needed to get settled as best we could before the first day.
We did finally close and moved everything in, but as these things go, life doesn’t just stop for unpacking so it takes a little while to get five peoples things organized and put away. Everything is still everywhere!! So really, I’ve spent the majority of the summer packing or unpacking. I didn’t mean to let this blog fall by the waste side but it was hard to find access to a computer sometimes and even harder to organize my thoughts into coherent sentences.
But I did keep a journal of things the Lord has taught me or spoken to me through this process and I’m back! I can’t wait to share them with you!
One of the biggest things or teaching moments in my life this summer has been the house buying process. I think the housing market has been a little crazy throughout the country but in central Texas, it has been absolutely insane. I even heard a story about sellers who wrote in their contract that the buyers would buy them pizza every Friday night until closing. Like, “ what the what?”
We moved to a smallish town from a much bigger one so I wasn’t expecting the market to be quite as competitive, but that was a big false hope. I was hoping to find an older home I could do some work to, but everyone of those I could find needed major repairs and were then no longer in our budget. I had dreams and expectations that had nothing to do with the Lord’s promises, and those are dangerous.
On top of that, there were a lot of people encouraging us that the Lord would provide and to not give up, not settle on a house that we didn’t love. I had a pretty long list of wants for this house, not needs, but you know, things Pinterest had convinced me I needed. But of course our budget was going to play a role in this decision and location was also a largely influential factor. What I quickly came to realize was there wouldn’t be a home that had everything I wanted that was also within a price range that would allow us to live a generous life and was in the location I was hoping for. In at least one of these ways, I was going to have to settle.
I was trying to balance what my husband wanted and felt comfortable with, along with what all I could do to make a house work for our current family, plus take into consideration the school zones because my oldest was about to start high school and had already made some friends and wanted to go to school with them.
Mainly, I was wrestling with what it meant for the Lord to provide. I wanted it to mean that someone would sense the Lord asking them to sell us their house that was the perfect size for our family at under market value and we would have everything we wanted with cushion still left in our budget. That is not what the Lord’s provision looks like. He may choose to bless our family in that way but when He promised to provide, that is something different entirely. It may mean that we can afford our house, but there might be some faith involved if we are going to live generously. It might mean trusting God if He has different schools picked out for my kids than what I had picked. It definitely doesn’t mean checking off on all my Pinterest dreams.
In what is probably Jesus’ most famous sermon, the sermon on the mount, found starting in Matthew 5, Jesus discusses how the Father’s love for us and His provision are intertwined. He talks about not worrying about having clothes to wear or food to eat because the Father feeds the birds and clothes the flowers and you are worth much more to him than birds and flowers. He goes a step further though and also talks about how even earthly fathers know how to give good gifts to their children. Jesus highlights that if someone who struggles with sin can give good gifts and be kind and loving, how much more would a perfect and Holy Father be wanting to love and bless and give good gifts to His children.
In many other places in the gospels Jesus paints a picture of the Father as kind, gracious, good, loving, generous, and wanting to bless His children. This is all coming from His son who knows that His Father has asked Him to live a life on earth without riches or comforts. He will be hated and rejected. He will suffer ridicule, embarrassment, and be beaten then crucified. How does He live a poor man’s life, knowing how it will end, and yet preach about a Father who’s love cannot be outdone.
Because even though Jesus lived on this earth, He wasn’t planning on staying. He was coming to earth on a mission. He had a battle to fight. He had a victory to win. He had more blessing and abundance and comfort in heaven than he could ever find here. He intimately knew and had experienced the love of the Father. A hard mission was not going to change what He knew to be true.
God’s loving kindness and provision is always there, making sure I have what I need and most times, going so far above and beyond that. But His best gifts and blessings await me in heaven, where I’ll get to experience them forever. Right now, I’m on a mission, and that might mean that there’s a task for me to do that lies outside of what I want or it might mean there’s something I need to sacrifice.
God definitely not only provided a house for our family to live in but blessed us greatly with many things big and small about our house. But it wasn’t some miracle or huge “only God” moment. In fact many people could probably look at the situation and not see God’s hand at all. But I know that God is always at work, causing things to work out or causing doors to close.
The house we bought wasn’t in the school zone that we were hoping for. We had tried to buy three or four other houses that were but for one reason or another, we couldn’t make it work and God never stepped in to make it work either. He closed those doors. We hesitated to make an offer on this house but with the market being so crazy, we felt we couldn’t let this house slip away. And God was there at every turn helping and providing in other ways to make it work. Like a place to live for a month while we were waiting to close and a way my kids could start school with everyone else instead of needing to wait a week and a half.
This was clearly the place He wanted us, but it didn’t check all my boxes. But He really isn’t concerned with all my boxes right now. He has a mission for me and my family. He has neighbors He wants us to reach and kids at school for my children to love on. Surrendering my life to Him was not to escape sacrifice or hard or scary things, but to offer my whole life as an offering for Him to use however He wants to. He takes care of all the details to get me in the right place at the right time and I can rest in His sovereignty and perfect timing.
I thought I had learned many of these things, especially this past year, but here I am, still a traveler on this journey to sanctification and trusting Him more and more.
Your Fellow Traveler
Lacey
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