So a month ago I posted the preface to our current story: pages that amount to months of a journey that has led us to take a step of faith and put our house on the market having no clue what's next aside from a baby due date (Groundhog Day, 2017!) and a depleted savings account. Now, a month later, chapter one's title reads more like the punch line of a joke than what we'd love for our current reality to be--partly because the one offer we've gotten was laughable (25 grand below asking price). We weren't laughing (with the potential buyers anyway).
Meanwhile, we've heard amazing stories of people whose house sold within 5 hours of its listing while the sellers were literally asleep. 5 hours! That's awesome! That's incredible! My nose would grow like a wooden boy's if I told you those kind of stories haven't made me jealous. Made me question. Made me wonder. Where's our 5 hour story?
Because how Hollywood could it have been to post a blog about stepping out on big faith...about how God's got this and God's got us, and then immediately see God do something miraculously, "immeasurably more" than our biggest dreams? A check shows up in our mailbox the next day with the inheritance money of a long-lost relative I didn't know we had. Or discovering the next day there are deposits of natural gas under our house, and we're entitled to a large sum of mineral rights money. Heck, I'd even take the Monopoly dude showing up with a Community Chest card that reads "Bank error in your favor, collect $200!"
Hearing stories like the 5 hour home sale while we clean the house every day for a month on the hopes of a showing leaves me with lots of questions. Questions of:
What? What are we supposed to do after we run out of savings next month? After Bonnie has the baby in February? Is Bonnie supposed to get a full-time job? Are we supposed to go into debt?
Where? Where are we supposed to move if the house does sell soon? Where are all the potential buyers? Where are you in this situation, God?
When? When will our situation change? When will someone buy our house? We know the answer to one when...when our savings will run out, but all our other whens are left unanswered.
Why? I've had lots of these questions (don't we all when we get squeezed?). Why did we feel led to buy this house 3 years ago if we're just supposed to turn around and sell it for little or no profit? Why don't you do something about this, God?
Reality is, as much as I'd like to, I don't have a lot of control over my what, where, when, and why. I don't get to choose or have answers to most of those questions. I don't get to choose when our house will sell. I don't get to choose when we have to pay the hospital and maternity doctors. I don't have control of many of the factors that affect our current situation. I don't get to choose my what, where, when, and why...but I get to choose my who. And I'm learning that my hope can't be in the somethings I can't control, but in Someone who is.
Part of the benefit of being a teacher is that I get to learn a whole lot. Right now in teaching through Survey of the Bible we've been going through the story of the Old Testament, and YES...there's lots of weird and disturbing things in the Old Testament. Yes it's full of jacked up people doing jacked up things. Yes some of it can be difficult to wade through (I'm looking at you, Leviticus). But it's also full of hope in the seemingly darkest of places. Stories revealing that God is most powerfully present when he seems most apparently absent.
Like Joseph. An easy target. From favored son, to slave, to prisoner before finally being put into position as 2nd in command of all of Egypt. Joseph endured years of being overlooked before seeing that God had been moving behind the scenes to not just elevate Joseph, but to put him in position to save nations of people from starvation, including the promised descendants of Abraham.
Or how about the whiny children of Israel in Numbers while they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years? They were clutching to the promises that they were going to one day be able to enter a good land flowing with milk and honey while they chewed on some unidentifiable heavenly saltines every day. Yet as they finally get to enter that good land, it's revealed that God had been working in the background. God wasn't squandering their wandering. He was preparing cities, vineyards, and groves for the Israelites in this promised land through the sweat and labor of others (Joshua 24:13).
Or the great story of suffering to redemption we see in Ruth as enemy Moabite, widowed Ruth moves from foreigner to family; widow to wife in the dark time of the judges. The main complaint (and final verse of Judges) was that the Israelites needed a king. And so in the midst of that dark period, God was moving in the background bringing foreigner Ruth into the family of Israel who would eventually give birth to king David--the answer to what the people were looking for.
Honestly I'd love to have a 5 hour story to post. To go from the preface page of our story straight to "The End." But I think that would be squandering our wandering. Because I believe that sometimes, God doesn't answer our prayers or give us the thing that we're asking for not because He isn't good enough. Not because He isn't strong enough. Not because we've done anything wrong or are so bad at prayer. But because he's willing to deprive us of something in order to drive us deeper into someone.
There's an undeniable relationship between trust and transformation. My greatest spiritual growth doesn't happen on Sunday when I know the tomb is empty, but on the dark Saturday while I'm still waiting with more questions than answers. Trusting. Hoping. Believing in faith that God can move in power. A 5 hour story leaves little room for trust, which leaves little room for transformation.
And that's what I want. That's the whole goal of being a Jesus-follower after all, isn't it? To look more like Jesus in what we say and do?
So though I hear his silence, and feel his apparent absence, I'm choosing to trust his presence. I'm choosing to believe the most prolific promise in scripture of, "I am with you." That though I haven't seen much movement on the housing front, he's rearranging things in His home in my heart and making more room for me to be filled with His fullness (Eph. 3:19).
Though my preference and my tendency is to put my faith in what's tangible--things I can see and touch, (my what, where, when, and why), those are ultimately the very things I can't control. So I'm still learning to put my faith in what's intangible. Someone I can't see or touch (my who). And trust from what I know to be true of His character that He is in control. That even if my family's circumstances get worse from here--if we go into debt or lose the house or whatever "what ifs" the natural me tends to dread...that God is still working things out in the background to do things I couldn't have even thought to ask for in a 5 hour story.
It may not be the story I wanted. But it's obviously the story I needed. Though the one offer on our house in Simpsonville was a lousy offer, the offer of transformation through trust I'm expecting to reap quite the return. So in the meantime, I'll try not to squander my wander and echo the words of the psalmist who said, "I will remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord."
