Some of you might remember last May or June when I told everyone and posted on Facebook (which makes it ultra-official, right?) that we were moving to Columbus, Ohio in July. Then, the last few months I’ve posted pictures like this…
And this…
And you thought, “Hmm, I guess I haven’t been to Columbus in a while, but that sure doesn’t look like Columbus.” Well you are right. We aren’t in Columbus…yet. In fact, we are in a long transitional period. If you have a few minutes, I will back up a little and tell you about it. Oh you do? Great!
Back in January or February (who can remember these things exactly?) I began to read a book called, “Anything” by Jennie Allen. The book basically shares her family’s story of surrender and how God used their prayer of “Anything God!” to flip their lives upside down.
It was quite timely, I knew big changes were coming up and I had no idea what those changes were going to look like for our family. My Hubs was just a few months away from finishing residency and had begun looking into jobs. We didn’t know if that job would be going overseas, staying in Tulsa, moving back to Ohio closer to family, or something entirely different.
So, I began to pray, “Anything, God! We want, what You want!” I was totally honest with Him. I told Him the things I was scared to do and why. I told Him what I wanted to do and why.
Then one night, in our backyard, sitting around a fire (because that’s where pretty much all of our best conversations happen), My Hubs told me about how one particular job kept coming to his mind again and again.
It was a clinic where he had completed a short rotation back in December of last year. The clinic is in the heart of the poorest neighborhood in its county, and its mission is to, “minister the love of Christ as a full-service medical home, focused on whole person wellness, available to all regardless of ability to pay.” So, basically its this sweet medical clinic, run by people who love and need Jesus, serving a ton of poor people, who also really need Jesus…in the ghetto.
So he tells me this, and I’m going to be really honest here…
My first thought was, “Awesome. Close to family!”
My second thought was, “We can live in a nice suburb, outside town, and he can commute.”
Because the fact is, we’ve NEVER lived in a nice area. Our first apartment complex was suuuuper cheap…for good reason (rats in the laundry room basement, among other things). The house we rented right after that, was suuuuper cheap, because the neighborhood was literally on the wrong side of the tracks, in another poor neighborhood (quite poor, for example, all our neighbors shared one vacuum). Then we moved to Tulsa, and found a wonderful, cute, perfect home for us…in another poor neighborhood.
And honestly…I just kinda wanted to be over that phase of our life.
I just wanted to live in a “nice” neighborhood, where my neighbors had jobs and went to work. Where I could walk my double stroller around without carrying pepper spray to ward off the 20 stray dogs, and without avoiding the “homeless highway” which was 25 yards behind our backyard. (can’t you feel the love and compassion for the poor that was just effortlessly flowing out of me?)
Plus, my oldest was going to start kindergarten, so in my head, we needed to move to a good school district. And since I hadn’t been super steller at reaching our poor neighbors in the past, surely I’d be better at sharing Jesus with people in a “nice” neighborhood. Right?
All the sudden, I found myself taking back my prayer of “Anything God!” and amending it to, “Anything, but this, this, and this.”
Now, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to live in a nice neighborhood, and there’s nothing wrong with living in a nice neighborhood.
But when I started making demands and exceptions to what I would and wouldn’t do while following Jesus, there was a problem.
Because the Bible doesn’t say, “Love the Lord your God with half your heart, mind, and soul, and love whatever you want with the other half.”
It doesn’t say, “In some of your ways, acknowledge Him, and then you can direct your own path.”
No, God wants us, “All in.”
So, what did I do? As a mature, adult woman, I stopped praying altogether for a couple weeks. I thought that maybe I could just ignore the whole thing.
But after being pretty miserable, I began to pray again. This time saying, “Lord, right now I am clearly, not willing to do ANYTHING. So, please help me be willing! Change my heart!
And you know what? Something crazy happened.
No, the Lord didn’t tie my hands behind my back, threaten me with the most terrible thing I can think of happening, if I didn’t go happily wherever he wanted me to go.
No, He actually was really gentle. He began bringing specific Scriptures to my mind, again and again. He brought people to speak truth to me and shatter much of my wrong thinking. He brought books across my path that got me excited to serve the poor, and slowly He changed my heart and made me, believe it or not, excited to move to the ghetto.
Meanwhile, my hubs is not a ginormous over-processor like I am, so he was more like, “Hey, I think God wants us to do this, so let’s do it!” (I still marvel at this, and try to remember we’ve all got our strengths…for example, I can…err, fall asleep really quickly)
So, we decide, “Okay let’s do it! Let’s go for the Columbus job! We are both really excited about it…and then guess what happens?
All these saweeeet job offers start rollin’ in. Jobs that look so much better on paper, jobs that have built in ministry, jobs where we can see exactly how we could use our gifts, jobs super close to either friends or family, even jobs overseas (that in my mind, at the time, would have been easier than the U.S. ghetto).
And we are both thinking, “Seriously?”
Sooooo, we spend some time praying about each job. BUT after praying, we again feel like the Lord is leading us to Columbus and now more specifically, to definitely live in the poor neighborhood where the clinic is located.
We sign a contract and BAM, just like that, it’s a done deal.
Then, we just have to find a house. Now we were thinking, “Oh that shouldn’t be a big deal because the Lord wants us there, AND He’s already provided wonderful houses for us in the past.”
So, I make the Facebook announcement that we moving to Columbus. My Hubs graduates, we pack up a truck with all our earthly belongings, and we head to his parent’s house, without a place to live, but sure we will find something quickly.
We keep our stuff in the U-Haul truck for a few days and head up to Columbus which is about an hour away. We look for a house to rent in the specific neighborhood that we feel that God wants us to live in, and….
Nada. Zip. Zilch.
Since it’s a rougher neighborhood, it quickly became clear that it was going to be difficult to find housing that was both big enough for our family and in fairly good condition.
After a few days of looking, we finally unpacked all of our boxes into my in-laws barn. (all our boxes under tarps because the roof leaks)
Over the next few weeks, we continued to look for housing and continued to dig through our boxes. My kids most commonly used phrase became, “When we get our stuff out of the boxes, then we can….”
We found several opportunities outside of the neighborhood, but again, we really felt like the Lord wanted us in this one neighborhood…so we turned them down.
Eventually, I talked to this guy about a house that I had seen on Facebook. I asked him if he would consider selling it to us, and he said he would get back to us.
Meanwhile, I had been praying about what to do with my oldest son (our quiet, timid, non-lover-of-change, son) who was supposed to start kindergarten in August…which at this point, was quickly approaching. We were trying to avoid starting him in a local school and then pulling him out a month later, moving, and then not sure about the next schooling option.
So by praying, “Anything God!” about his schooling, the Lord performed a miracle and changed this mama’s heart to even be willing to homeschool. I’m not against homeschooling, I just know it doesn’t line up with my particular skill set. However, thinking that was the best option at the time, I did my research, ordered the curriculum, and started to gear up for talk myself into, a year of homeschooling. Four kids at home, the oldest being 5 years old, the youngest being 6 months, I can TOTALLY do this, and it will be perfect with my super organized disorderly personality!
Then the owner of the house got back to us and said that he did not want to sell it. We were a little bummed, but kept looking.
Weeks go by.
One week away from the start of school, with no houses on the horizon, My Hubs and I email the owner of the house that we offered to buy, and ask if we could rent it. He quickly said that yes we could, however, we needed to wait until the current lease was up…which was the end of March.
Eight. Months. Away.
We talked it over and agreed to wait for the house. So, we met my son’s kindergarten teacher the next day, he started school three days after that, and he’s attending the same school My Hubs attended in elementary school. (which is pretty awesome)
Now, My Hubs is commuting about an hour each way, which isn’t as bad as we thought it would be, and we are living with his padres. …which if you are going to live with someone, it’s as ideal as you can get.
They have four bedrooms and a bath upstairs and their bedroom is downstairs AND they can’t even hear our kids crying or whining up there, which takes a HUGE weight off of me! They live on a beautiful farm and the kids can roam and play for hours.
Plus, my in-laws are crazy amazing, which makes the whole thing doable.
And so we find ourselves in a looooong transition.
Eight months. Did I mention that?
And honestly, we aren’t sure why we are here for this long, although I have my guesses.
Sometimes, I think it’s because of the mom who needs to know Jesus, whom I talk with every time I pick my son up from school. That wouldn’t be too crazy would it? Keeping our family here for 8 months for her? Actually to me, it sounds a little like what I know of God’s heart….leaving the ninety-nine to go after the one.
Sometimes, I think it’s because we are headed into some hard stuff. Maybe God knew we needed life to realllllllly sloooow dooooown. Maybe this down time is for us to get our energy up, to draw even closer as a couple and family, to pray and to be still, before we head back into crazy life.
Sometimes, I think it’s because I had a lot of excuses to put things off (e.g. this blog), when we were really busy, so when I couldn’t use those excuses anymore, I just had to start doing those things.
Maybe someday we will look back and know exactly why we were here for 8 months and maybe we won’t. But for now, we are actually really enjoying it.
And even though there are still so many unknowns, like the fact that we are moving into a house that we’ve never actually stepped foot inside. We are moving to a neighborhood that we really don’t know that much about. We have no big or great plans, We aren’t super stars at living among the poor. But ya know what? It has been super clear that God wants us there, and THAT makes us really really excited.
So bring on the adventure! Well that is…in another 3.5 months. Ha!
Simple and Sweet 