The great detour

The mindset…So here we are, plugging along learning about Jesus and all, basking in all of His gifts and blessing, but we still had two major thorns. The culprit…the flip house had not sold and we were supporting two mortgages on one income. We had a top notch realtor listing our house and she continually said, “I have no idea why this house isn’t selling. It’s cute, it’s priced great, and other houses in this neighborhood are selling…I just don’t understand. God must be saving this house for somebody really special.” When I probed God about it (mind you, we’ve been sitting on this vacant house for two and a half years at this point) He would constantly tell me, “Carey, I know who I want to live in that house, and they’re not ready yet.” So I’m thinking, “These people haven’t moved to the area yet” or “maybe they can’t afford to buy a house yet, but they will soon.” Either way, whoever these people were, they needed to get their act together because I was tired of paying for their house!

Now, you don’t survive supporting two mortgages on one income without learning how to stretch a buck. From a practical standpoint God has taught us so much about stewarding His money over the last two years. We studied Dave Ramsey’s advice (and put it to practice), cut coupons, used cloth diapers, made baby food, made our own laundry detergent, used the scary, at-home hair color boxes, you name it to save a buck. (I have to pause here and give a shout out and thank you to my friends KT, KJ, and WT for their guidance in this…you gave me the confidence to conquer poopy cloth diapers with courage and save tons of money in the process.) Anyway, in an effort to be responsible with the funds God gave us, Toby and I made a commitment to not have any more children until the flip house sold and we had some breathing room in our finances. You have to know that my desire for life, from the time I was a little girl, is to be a mommy. As an only child, Toby is totally on board with this plan and we’d be thrilled to have our own basketball team. So, agreeing to postpone having more children was a huge sacrifice for us, but we gladly did it in an effort to make a responsible decision for our family.

February 2010…Because our finances were so tight, we were constantly trying to cook up new ways to cut corners. One idea was to refinance the flip house since we were paying unnecessary PMI and a crazy high interest rate. After consulting with a few banks and finance companies things on this path just weren’t working and on a Friday morning I put Haley down for a nap, made a phone call and had another door slammed in my face. I had planned to spend time reading my Bible while Haley napped, but I chose to pitch a fit about the house instead. For the first time in nearly a year, I yelled at God about it…“Why won’t you take this away?!? Haven’t we already learned so much?!? When will you release us from this burden?!?” To be honest, I sat on my bed, crying, pouting and yelling like a two year having a meltdown tantrum. Just like any good parent, my behavior did not result in the answers I wanted. I got nothing…not one single word of comfort or guidance. So I just sat there and sulked and looked out my bedroom window. I guess I came to my senses, tore down my wall and began to read like I had planned because a few minutes into my reading I got a call from Toby. He said, “I have a new perspective on the flip house.” I thought, Perfect, I could use a new perspective. Toby continued, “What if…God has been saving the flip house…for us?” Excuse me? “I was running on the treadmill at lunch and I heard God speak louder and clearer than ever before…in fact, I had to slow down to a walk so I could catch it all. He told me that I am suppose to go to seminary, we are suppose to live in that house, and I’m suppose to work in a church.” Silence…I was caught so off guard that my instinctive smart mouth kicked in, “Well, first of all, there’s no seminary in Mobile.” Toby gently replied, “What about the University of Mobile?” Oh, holy, Jesus...that makes total sense. The University of Mobile is a small, Christian school with a wonderful theology program…and it’s four miles from the flip house. In an instant, the past year flashed through my mind…that’s exactly what we’re suppose to do. Suddenly, all of the people and lessons God had brought in our lives started to line up and make perfect sense. I didn’t have anything else to say than, “Ok.”

After I hung up the phone, I sat on my bed in a complete state of shock. Suddenly, this force came over me and I began to rock as I found myself shaking uncontrollably. Tears were pouring from my eyes as images flashed through my mind. “Don’t you see? This is what I’ve been preparing you for. This is why I taught you this lesson, and this is why I brought this person into your life.” The images continued for the next 24 hours, each one taking my breath away with its clarity. After a few minutes of this trembling, I couldn’t stand to be alone in my shock for another minute, so I called my best friend, Sara, whose husband happens to be in the ministry. The poor thing had just pulled into Target when I unloaded this life changing revelation on her. For 30 minutes I verbalized, to the best of my ability, what Toby and I had discussed and what had been going through my mind. Somehow, saying it out loud made it much more tangible and solid. I needed that. Later, I journaled all of these things and I even asked, “God, is this you?” But even as my pen wrote the question it felt like a waste of energy and I felt Him saying, “Duh, of course it’s me!!” Over the coming months we would receive constant confirmation that this was not our idea, but His. Then I realized that Haley had been napping for nearly four hours, something that was completely unheard of for her. I have chalked that up as sweet Jesus giving me the time I needed that afternoon to process this life changing detour.

By the time Toby got home from work, there was nothing left to say, nothing to discuss, nothing to pray about. God said “go” so now we just need to go. As we laid in the bed that night, we were both wide awake with excitement and I couldn’t help but see Jesus doing a happy dance. As if He’d been working on us and waiting all this time and today He finally got to reveal what He’d been up to. I think He was even more excited than we were! The next morning we called our realtor and asked her to pull the house from the market…we were moving in it! And so the journey began. We had no idea how many lessons we would learn between Knoxville and Mobile, but we know now that each one would be a treasure….