Yesterday I put together my new home for next year, and it took me five minutes! It would be the Lord to have me live in a tent after spending a decade pouring my blood, sweat and tears into a house. While I sat in my backyard I looked at my home and I was flooded with emotion because of the goodbye that’s coming. Bye to the past, bye to the dreams that never came true, bye to my little place in the world.
When I bought it I was so hopeful to make the memories we see in scrapbooks, to have my little home in the background of pictures with the ‘just married’ and ‘welcome home baby’ signs, a little dog running around in the yard and of course that yard would have a white picket fence. I did get the little dog. That was it! God just didn’t like the size of my vision. Perhaps one day those things may be true but first there is a major work He must have me do and its not about tearing down ceilings. It’s about tearing down strongholds. He started with mine so that I could be used to help others with theirs.
I have experienced what happens to the plan that God is not for, no matter the extent to which I tried to make my vision a reality He did not bless what was not His will. It took the hand of God to allow for the destruction of my home on a level that I was not capable of making cute with “shabby chic” design. As a tactic meant for ruination I believe some Beelzebub beetles were sent to eat right through the wood floors I almost killed myself restoring. After one expensive pest control treatment they descended upon the house again and again. They chipped away at the crumbling foundation of my idol. Then came the rains, major flooding. A raging river flowing underneath the fences, water converged on my backyard and sunk into the ground. I noticed erosion but as the hole expanded I thought of the possibility that my home is on a sinkhole? They are all throughout the neighborhood… Well, instead of going down with this house into the pit of Sheol I have decided to run the World Race.
What is the exit strategy? Foreclosure. Why would I have chosen to forsake my one possession? The Lord knew what this home had become to me, I was so consumed with plans for it, work on it and decision making around it that it has to go! Actually everything has to go. For years I made payments to creditors but with the outrageous interest I was just running in place. With the debt of medical bills, home improvement credit cards and other miscellaneous charges stemming from my period of unemployment due to major injuries, well, I had to make some difficult decisions. I listened to my family, I consulted with a Christian credit counseling agency, I took Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University, I met with someone from church and then I got a lawyer but only after going to my final authority by way of much prayer and fasting. I filed bankruptcy and I surrendered my house to the bank. I am now at a total loss but I hold onto His promises. If you cling to your life, you will lose it; but if you give up your life for me, you will find it. Matthew 10:39.
Traumatizing, yes, because this is just the kind of situation to cause shame but I refuse to accept it, or to feel defeated. All along the way I had the Holy Spirit comfort me. He always knows how to reassure me that I am headed in the right direction. When my interview ended with the Christian credit counseling agency I was shocked, I was expecting to be advised to consolidate because that’s how they make their money but they advised me to file bankruptcy. I sat in my car and cried, turned on the radio and Colton Dixon’s “More of You” came alive in my humbled heart. “I made my castle tall, I built up every wall, This is my kingdom and it needs to fall…”
I highly suggest listening to it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9jeLGP3nIc
After meeting with my lawyer I got in the car and it really hit me that this was my path so I started singing Brandon Heath’s “No Turning Back” and all of a sudden my rearview mirror popped off the glass and landed in my lap. God managed to make His point!
No turning back
No turning back
I’m moving on
Not looking back
I’m giving him
All that I have
No turning back
No turning back
With every ending is a new beginning. So as I lay in my tent next year I will enjoy a skylight view of Heaven and know that He took a house but gave me the World (Race).
