This is a lengthy post, but it contains important information on the future of this blog and future plans for our family, so I thank you for sticking with me until the end.
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I heard a wonderful sermon this morning and it spoke right to my heart. Don't you love it when that happens? It spoke to things I have been struggling with and planning for and the message just seemed to gather up all of the little bits and pieces of my scrambled life and tie them up in a way that suddenly made sense. I've been struggling with that-how to share all of the bits and pieces to bring you up to speed.
In
Galations 6:7-10 the Apostle Paul writes that we will each reap an individual harvest of what is "sewn" in our lives. Each decision, thereby, is a seed planted toward that harvest. I have been thinking for some time now about the seeds I am sewing and wondering what the harvest is going to look like.
What will be its weight and its worth?
I think the flip side of this same question is “what are my dreams?” What am I working toward and why? Mr. Marvelous and I love to dream together. . It is a tie that binds our marriage together, our heads on our pillows at night, making plans for a beautiful future.
My dream is to have a cottage in the country-a fixer with a low mortgage payment, lots of home improvement projects, and acres for lots of children to run and play. I dream of my husband having a job that allows him to work from home so that I have more time with him in this life than evenings and weekends and ten days of vacation each year. Ten days. When did life become that way? At what price? Someday his commute will be the distance from our bed to the coffee pot, instead of the current 45 minute interstate drive in heavy traffic.
Several months ago, about the time that I was gigantically pregnant with Wynn (no coincidence), we decided to start taking actual steps towards accomplishing these dreams. I spent a long time praying and seeking God’s will. We considered the harvest to come and what we want that to look like. We prayed and analyzed and ultimately decided that it was going to be much more difficult, if not impossible to realize these dreams, things that we felt God was calling us to, when so many of our seeds were going directly to Chase mortgage at the end of every month. While we could afford the New Old house financially, we perhaps couldn’t afford it in other ways. Our dream home was getting in the way of real dreams-bigger dreams.
So . . . deep breath . . . we sold it.
It was HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARD.
It is still hard.
Hard. Hard. Hard.
It is so hard to list your home, which you really don’t want to leave at all, but feel like you are supposed to do so, and listen to other would-be-buyers admire everything you love most, designed yourself and are going to miss dearly. I’m human. I will admit that. I will admit that this has been hard.
I want to stress though that this wasn’t just a decision of selling one house to buy a different house. It was
the first whisper of a calling toward a new adventure that He has authored for us and we have had to shed some material things in order to press forward and follow Him.
"Then he said to them all: 'If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.'" Luke 9:23
"I will give you the treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am the LORD, the God of Israel, who summons you by name." Isaiah 45:3
We are closing on our house at the end of the month and we are moving into a house, which we are renting. It is a whole lot smaller than the New Old House so we have been going through everything we own and only keeping the things we truly love. We are selling some stuff, donating some stuff, and honestly having some fun purging. It’s amazing the stuff you accumulate and store amidst dust in the basement without second thought.
The new house is a 1950 brick colonial with great original hardwood floors and quite possibly the tiniest kitchen you ever will see. I have already started pretty-ing it up and think that some of these low cost non-permanent decorating ideas will be useful to many of you out there-especially other renters! We are excited to have the chance to live seriously below our means for awhile and save toward the future.
We are on a journey friends. This is the first step in a grand adventure.
What do you say? Do you want to come along for the ride?
I can almost see it in the distance . . . the magnificent harvest.
He has promised it will not disappoint.
"But those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint."
Isaiah 40:31
Keep growing big and strong, my darling. Just not too fast! 
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