April 6, 2013

• Merciful Evolution

  Blake and I started out in a one bedroom apartment on the campus of our Bible college. So in love and beyond ecstatic that we shared the same space all alone every night after work.

  We got pregnant a year later which gave us the beyond incredible opportunity to move to a TWO bedroom apartment! We were in heaven even if the bathrooms were covered in pink tile.

  Less than two years later we bought our first house. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, with half of the garage converted into a second living room. I thought that was so cool. I was a queen living in my castle.

  

  But I have to come clean. It didn’t take long to start comparing my house to others I saw, and I started dreaming for bigger. I wanted four kids and a big house to fit them all in, so I started praying hard. And God blessed us with a big house with more room than we knew what to do with. And I loved it. Oh how I loved it.

  

  But more than we loved our house, we longed to be in ministry. So less than three years later we sold our lovely home and moved to Brownsville. I hadn’t seen our rent house until the day we drove into town. We pulled onto our new street and I was pretty close to horrified to see bars on the windows of most of the houses. In the DFW area, there weren’t bars on the windows anywhere except the areas of town you didn’t want to get lost in. I cried my eyes out the first night, and made Blake promise not to post ANY pictures of our house on facebook. But I learned to love it. Despite the tiny master bathroom, the smallest closets ever, the yellow painted walls, the half garage with the mouse, and the more than an occasional cock roach, I learned to love things that were more important like the big trees in the backyard. And the occasional parrots and hawks that would come to perch on those big trees. And the swing set that came with the house. And the fact that we were minutes from the church allowing Blake to come home for lunch every day. And the realization that everyone felt comfortable in our house rather well-off or significantly under the poverty line. After a few months I even let my children play in the backyard alone despite the barred windows of my neighbors.

  

  We lived in that house for a year, and then for the third time in our ten years of marriage we bought a house. It was much smaller than our house in the DFW area, but it was beautiful and the neighborhood was perfect. Friends for the kids. Friends for Blake and I. In the country but still close to everything. Blake said, “We won’t move again.” And I didn’t argue.

  

  But then God started doing major stuff in our hearts. We started feeling grieved for the poor, for the orphan, for the widow. More than anything, we wanted to follow God wherever He wanted to lead us…and we knew He was leading us somewhere away from our pretty blue house. Our desires began to change. Our dreams changed. Our goals changed. What made us happy changed. What satisfied us changed. What broke our hearts changed.

  Our condo here in Guatemala has bars on every window. I adore them. I sleep in peace every night and keep our windows wide open during the day. God chose me for this barred window life and I am speechlessly grateful. I think back to my silly self crying about my barred window neighborhood and thank God for moving me to that house. That was THE BEST house I have ever lived in. That house stomped on my pride. That house mocked what I thought was important.

  Neighbors are important. Hospitality is important. Humility is important.
  Beauty is nature. Beauty is family. Beauty is being exactly where God has called you to be.

  

  PS I still love beautiful houses. I have an album of beautiful rooms for my beautiful dream house on pinterest. Maybe I will live in it one day, maybe it will even be my house in Heaven. But I know that above my love for beautiful houses has to be a love for Jesus. And sometimes Jesus wants me to love Him in houses that could be on the front of magazines, and sometimes He wants me in houses that I’m a little embarrassed to put on facebook. I will be content in both.

  PSS (or is it PPS) That house I was embarrassed to live in? It’s a mansion to most here in Guatemala. I know that and it makes me ashamed of this whole blog post. But I’m posting it anyway with this addition at the end. We are incredibly, terribly blessed. And yet the happiest people on earth have so much less than any of us.

  • 10:27 pm
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