Notebook Paper and a Kitchen Table

In the early years of marriage I knew I had a LOT to learn and let’s be honest, I still do. I grew up in a home where my mom basically did everything including working full time—technically she was the leader of the home and so I grew up with some feministic and stubborn ways. I did not realize how much I wanted to be the leader in the relationship and how difficult it was going to be for me to allow my new husband to lead me into unknown places. What I was sure of, is that I trusted God and I trusted His ways and I knew His ways were always for my good because I loved Him.

Year three everything came to a head in my marriage. I found out we were expecting our first child and my sweet husband got it in his head that he wanted to move to a house with some land (actually that idea is still in his head). When my husband gets something in his mind, he kind of obsesses over it and he is an instant gratification kind of guy but if it weren’t for him we would never do anything off course or unexpected. He showed me pictures of houses with land for weeks and even started investigating how much money we could earn from the sale of our current house. The stronger he pushed me toward this idea, the stronger I pushed back. I resisted the hassle of change and moving and having 10 acres to mow and being isolated in the country. Basically everything about his idea I hated but one thing I did not hate was him. I love my husband immensely but I gave him my opinion over and over.

One day, in the quiet I remember vividly God whispering to my heart. I remembered what I read in the Bible about my husband leading our home. I remembered verses that I grew up quoting about respecting my husband. But I remembered really NOT wanting to buy that house. But I KNEW this was my chance, my time to honor God AND my husband and allow my husband to lead our family and so I stopped. I stopped arguing. I stopped being negative and I stopped speaking against every aspect of the idea. Not long afterwards, we bought that house.

Now I know what you’re thinking, “that’s a pretty good story” but I have not even gotten to the good part yet. The story gets so much better, it gets so much deeper and so incredibly special. This story changed my life and rocked me to my core forever. It’s the reason I have retold it hundreds of times in the past decade and a half and why I must tell you about it now.

To make a long story short, we moved to that house in the country that I did not want to move to.  We even managed to make enough money on our first home to pay off my college loan. But the mortgage process proved to be more difficult than expected and finding home insurance on a modular home in the country was a hurdle I could have never imagined. We lived in the middle of nowhere and it was not my favorite but I managed. My husband loved it. And I got to see his joy having land and grass to mow. But after only living there only a short while, both of our jobs changed. The change meant a 45 minute commute for him and a likely missed opportunity for me to work remotely. The internet service in the country was still dial-up, yes dial-up and it would be too slow for the network I was needing to access. After a few months of resisting the idea of moving away, my husband relented.  He admitted that the move had been a mistake.  A mistake I would say he still regrets to this day. 

Let's take a step back for just as second.  I feel the need to explain that I grew up in a relatively traditional church and I do not know to this day if it was my ears that got everything messed up or the temperature of the teaching that I was immersed in, but I grew up to believe that if I made mistakes God would punish me and if I did good things God would give me blessings. I mean that’s how we parent, right? It is almost a natural mindset to relate them with one another and there are certainly times in scripture when God punished the naughty and gave blessing to the obedient. I remember countless prayers of well-meaning people asking God to bless their obedience. But what I did not realize at the time nor focused on in my walk with the Lord is that's NOT always what happened. Poor Job was just minding his own business when God tested him and took away all his worldly possessions and destroyed his family.  And let's not forget how David sinned repeatedly but God called home “a man after his own heart” and made him a king!

OK back to 2005, upon my husband’s admission that he had made a mistake and his apology for moving us, we agreed we should again move. The very next day, I went to a local sandwich shop where I knew the owner. I was explaining that we were going to need to get our house on the market when the woman standing next to me in the line, whom I had never met, politely asked how much land our home was on. She goes on to explain how she and her husband had been looking for 10 acres (which happened to be the exact size of our yard) and they would be interested in coming to look at our house. What?! Wow, OK. So the next day she and her husband came to our house. They looked around for a while and asked lots of questions, they discussed opportunities and considered the commute. Of course I was a skeptic and I took all that discussion as the communication that they were not as interested as we had hoped. But just then, when my skepticism had reached an all-time high, they pulled out a piece of notebook paper. That piece of notebook paper changed my life. That night at our kitchen table, God sold our house on a a piece of college ruled paper to strangers I happened to be standing next to in a coffee shop. No fancy contract. No realtor. No second showing. Nothing.  As you can probably imagine, I still have that piece of paper.

Of course this provision amazed me and overwhelmed me. But what it did most was show me I was wrong. Not only was my husband was NOT being disciplined for making a less-than-perfect choice, we were being blessed despite the imperfect decision. I can not adequately explain how this truth transformed my life.  From that point forward I saw God in a totally different way.  I was able to connect with Him in a father-daughter way like never before.  For a long time I even thought about my life before He sold our house and after, like a true defining moment.  I still can not believe that it happened.  I learned so much about God.  I learned that He is there for us no matter what.  I learned that He wants to give us gifts.  I learned that He WILL give us gifts even when we do nothing to deserve them.  I learned that I needed to take a deeper look at scripture and examine what I thought to be true.  I learned that allowing my husband to lead was only part of the blessing I would receive.  This was my first true step towards courageousness.  It is a slow process but an amazing one worth noting.  

I hope you had the time to take in every detail of this story of God’s amazing provision because this chapter is still NOT over. I promise you, it gets even better but you will have to wait some time before you get to read the ending. I hope you dare to come along with me and take your own small steps toward being slowly emboldened.