The Journey: Providential Twists & Turns

When we’re young, we all try to imagine what we want to do when we grow up; what we’ll be and how we’ll live out our fairytale life. We’re not promised a crystal ball nor an itinerary. What fun would THAT be? I remember wanting to be a mom with 2 kids and a dog. I didn’t have a ‘plan’ for when they went off to college. Maybe that’s why the ‘mid-life crisis’ happens about the time the empty nest occurs.

No child ever dreams of one day getting divorced, but life, love, and things change. Enter one of God’s beautiful twists- that twist has a name, and it is Lance :-D. I remember the moment I felt a serious connection with this shaved head, ear-ringed dude was when he showed me his spreadsheet on items needed for TEOTWAWKI. That may sound strange to most, but the fact that he planned for the future with more than just an IRA really tweaked my desire to be with him.

Together we took great pleasure in finding a place to settle or ‘hunker’ down. That was our weekend entertainment for a couple years. Searching for properties that were off the beaten path. How we met our beloved (ever so patient) Realtor, Rockey, has got to be God’s doing, too. On the one hand it seemed like our search was pretty broad. I’d look on the internet each week night and send Lance, then Rockey, possible properties for us to consider. I looked in 5 different counties within an hour of my job in Birmingham. We looked at everything from 1-25 acres. Lance is gifted in the art of Shack-Improvements (some of the places he fixed up couldn’t be called homes). So fixer-uppers rated high on the list. He use to say ‘the worse they are, the better they are for us’. We could get them dirt cheap. We bought a couple houses and ‘flipped’ them, always searching for that place to put down roots. We even expanded our search to TN and KY. Heck, I searched in OH and NC, too. We spent several months researching life in South America. HELLO, God?? Can you help us out here? He did…

We cannot direct the wind but we can adjust our sails

Those of you that have a GPS know that when you make a ‘wrong’ or different turn ‘she’ gets a little miffed and seems to scold you, hollering, “RECALCULATING! Recalculating”.

HUGE recalculating in our search for our homestead. One night, when I sat down to search properties online, Lance throws out a curve ball (did God pitch this to him in a dream I wonder?) “How ’bout Idaho?” Me, frustrated with no perfect place to call ‘OURS’, I shifted my search to not only another state, but one 2300 miles away. I confess, I wasn’t even sure where Idaho was. After looking at a map of the USA, I quickly found the state shaped like the one I’d viewed for years on my sacks of potatoes! I sent out many emails to Realtors inquiring about several different areas and properties. We hook up with THE perfect Realtor for us, Chris Walsh, thank You God. Our search is aided by a like minded individual. Nevermind that he is the ONLY Realtor that responded to my query. I know now that God weeded out the lazy folks and scooped up the cream of the crop for us!

What happens next has GOT to be God tweaking our future. Here is Lance and Mary, they’ve viewed hundreds of properties (if not 1,000’s via the internet over the past few years). NONE of them meet our criteria; too big, too small, too expensive, bad ‘hood, poor lay of the land, no creek (I could go on…). Our Realtor, Chris, knows what we’re looking for, but hears Lance joke about finding a little house with a big ass pole barn for all our stuff. As they were talking, Chris gets an email from a client that just lowered his price on his cabin in a lake community. Get this, it has a HUGE, beautiful, new pole barn next to the tiny cabin. Lance tosses the idea to me as a purchase we can make and then flip, just to get us out to Idaho. He gets a fast ‘sure’ from me.

Really? We just bought this house, sight unseen? No inspection, no visit to the actual state of Idaho?? Here is where God comes in, AGAIN. He knew that if we would’ve seen it or had it inspected, we may not have bought it. It’s tough to flip a house in this market, even if you’ve got the talents Lance does. We get here and after a mere month (or less) we decide not to sell, but to settle here. Here, where there is no acreage, no south-facing basement, no creek (all things we thought we HAD to have). Wait, there’s more reasons we wouldn’t have bought it if we saw it; zero closets, a bathroom that makes the one on planes seem spacious, the washer is IN the kitchen, the staircase is a step above a bunkbed ladder, the foundation needed work (LOTS of work), there is a home owners association. Good Lord, you fixed us good this time. Thank You. We love, love, LOVE it here!

The moral of my story: I believe God knows what’s best for us. Heck, He created us in His image. We just have to let go of the choke hold we have on our plans and be open to His providential twists and turns along our journey.