|
Isaiah 60:6-A multitude of camels will cover
you, the young camels of Midian and Ephah; All those from Sheba will come; They will bring gold and frankincense, and will
bear good news of the praises of the Lord.
In '73 I had moved into the third ministry house that
I lived in, in another city than the first two. It was connected to my fosterparent's church. The second and third
houses were filled with exhippies and this was during the 'Hippie Revival' which is now called the 'Charismatic Renewal'(technically
the Hippie Revival came first-60's-70's and the Charismatic/Catholic (Revival) Renewal came in the 70's). I had my own
room, with hardly anything in it, because all I brought from my mother's house could fit in 2 cardboard boxes. One day, when
I came home from my job, I walked into a room that no longer appeared to be mine. Because I found a bed with a pretty bedspread
over a pretty pink blanket, a pretty, coordinating, rug on the floor, a green padded bench at the foot of the bed and
a dish garden on the dresser. My housemates told me that a sister had visited and decided that my room was too barren and
went and furnished my room. The giver of the dish garden is still a mystry, to this day, and I still have one of the
plants. Then I would come home often from work, to find items in my room which were always given anonymously and often I didn't
need them. I would ask God what to do with them. He would tell me to hang onto them until He brought their owner to me. Which
He did either the next day, a few months or years down the line. Then I would pass the item on to them.
I had a roommate who was constantly angry with me
because others were constantly giving to me or helping me, without my asking and often before I knew that I needed. She just
didn't understand that I wasn't making them do anything. I was just trying, to the best of my ability, to do what God was
telling me to do, and that included being blessed by others. Sometimes I learned that the BIGGEST gift that I could give was
in receiving what was being given to me.
My husband and I were married in 1980. We had so much
help. My fosterfather married us in the backyard of the ministry I was living in. My fostersiblings were in the wedding or
sang in it. Two friends gave the photography as gifts. My fostermother got the pattern for my dress, the hats for my attendants,
the basket for my flower girl and did the reception. Wedding guests also gave us money in the wedding, enough to
reimburse everything that we had put out for the wedding AND the honeymoon, which included rental car, motel room for 2 weeks
and plane tickets back to my husband's home state. Please understand, these were mainly, simple people in a small country
town with not a whole lot of money or resources, and neither did we have much. And yet, there was an abundance of blessing
to get the job done very well.
My husband and I moved back out of his home state, 6 months
after the wedding and moved back to my fosterparents' church. We had gone to help his father move his shop out of its old
location, to its new one, and to move. We left our condo with his parents to rent with option to sell. Two years later, it
sold on a five year note with a ballon payment due in the fifth year. We used the money to finance my quitting my job and
going back to school in the new town we had moved to the year before. Later, I got pregnant with our son, had to drop
out of school and had him in '87. The same year, we got the balloon payment, the entire amount without the remaining mortgage
having been removed first. No matter how many times we called the title company about the mistake, they wouldn't admit to
it and basically said that they had done what they were supposed to have done. So, we told them exactly what we were going
to do with the money and did it. We paid off bills, got essential needs, a moving truck and moved across country to our present
home state, 6 months after our son's birth. We arrived here, 9 days later, with nowhere to live and no job prospects. Our
fosterparents, who had moved here 5 years earlier, hooked us up with a Christian realtor. We told her that we wanted a home
that had a low down payment, low monthly payments, low mortgage and the owner carried the paper. While we were talking
to her and filling out the paperwork, our house came over the MLS listing, but not yet publicly listed. We went to see it
and knew as soon as we drove into the driveway that it was ours. Ten days after we had arrived, we were moving into our new
home. The manager of the place where we had stored our things gave my husband his first job in the other place where
the manager worked. Right after we had made a binding agreement to buy the house, we got calls from my husband's family
telling us to give the money back. The title company had finally come to their senses and realised the mistake they had made.
But we couldn't unspend the money. It was gone. My husband's parents said that they would take out a loan to pay the mortgage.
We couldn't do anything at the time, but planned to pay them back when we could finally afford it.
Years later, We found out 2 very interesting things-first
we had the opportunity to speak to our realtor and found out that our property was an absolute miracle, and that it was the
only one, in all the years that she had worked in the business, that came with the specific requirements and price tag that
we had required. We got a lot more land for a lot less cost and requirements than usually expected. What we asked for just
wasn't possible in the natural realm. Around the same time we asked my husband's parents about paying back the loan on
the mortgage, and found that they had never taken out a loan and had never paid on the mortgage, and the title company in
question had gone through bankruptcy and had never come after any of us for the money. That has been almost 21 years.
When we bought this property, it had a '68 mobilehome on
it with additions. The owner put a lien on the mobilehome, not allowing us to remove it until we had paid the 12 year mortgage
off.
In '97, the elder over us in the church we were working
in, got the church to pay for some repairs for our mobilehome, replacing floors, a wall, bathroom/kitchen fixtures, carpeting
and roof coating. Most of the repairs he did himself, so they were excellent. However, the roof repairs were done by another
elder who had a problem with us. So, instead of listening to my husband and walking along the edges of the roof, he, 280 pounds,
walked down the middle of the roof and broke ever single roof beam and never apologised. We had to saw off the corners of
some doors to open or shut them since the roof was caved in up to 10 inches in some places.
Up to this point, we had been discussing doing a roofover
on the house and some other repairs, after the mortgage was paid off, instead of replacing it. But after this, after we got
over being angry, we realised that God wanted us to replace the mobilehome. Then strangers started telling us that God
was replacing our home with a house and not a mobilehome.
We paid the mortgage off around 2 months early in '99.
Then we spent a year or so enjoying a home with no mortgage. But then, in 2000, the drought ended and the rains poured down
in buckets and our son and I were spending our days dumping 5 gallon buckets all day long. Even then, the floors were
separating from the walls and the water was pouring through the ceilings in the kitchen and parts of our bedroom. We applied
for a mobilehome, but didn't qualify. People were telling us HOUSE, not MOBILEHOME. Then God told us that we would know when
it was His will when we literally saw people walking into our new home with their arms piled high with blessings for our house.
We went and applied for a house to be built on our property, Fall 2000. I really sweated this one because I knew it meant
that we would have another mortgage and the land that we had paid off would become the collateral for the new house. We qualified.
We prepared the property for the new house. During this time, my husband saw 2 cows standing in the middle of the yard where
the house was going to be built, and we knew that God was going to bless us in our new home. Then we waited...and we waited...and
we waited....and dumped and dumped and dumped buckets of water. They broke ground on our house, March 2002 and finished in
June 2002. During July, others, literally walked into our new home with their arms piled high with furniture and other things
for our home; rugs,bookshelves,hundreds of dollars in shelving units, a dining room set, filing cabinets, a stove, ceramic
tile, household linens, etc.
Please understand, I'm not recommending anything here,
except that when we truely and sincerely follow what God tells us to do, He WILL provide for us through whatever
circumstances that may come our way. He will take care of every need, maybe not the way that we would like for Him to,
or would expect, but in the way of His choosing and in the way of thorough provision as He designates.
|
