Pulling Picket Fences

"Where are you?"



"Is everything okay?"


"It's not the same at Such-and-Such blog (comments section), without a certain Carpenter's Daughter." (That one was my favorite!)

Click here to find out why I was referred to as the, "The Carpenter's Daughter."

YES! I am HERE!  

Where???

HERE!!!

  (I took these during our first "real" snow.)

This is our NEW back yard! 

This view is from our court yard porch. The little tree is not only "ours," but holds a darling little bird's nest.

 You cannot tell from the photo, but the court yard is HUGE, and has plenty of running room for the kids. Plus, I can keep a watchful eye on them, while I read a book, as I sit at my (future) bistro set, where I'll sip tea.

>Insert extreme excitement here<

This move has been over two years in the making. We have gone through some serious changes, and I hope that doesn't stop any time soon. I don't want it to stop, because I feel like we were going down the wrong path for a long, long, long time. I hope this is the beginning of a fresh, crazy, insane new beginning. A radical step of faith. Radical, in the sense of a middle class American Family moving into a middle class apartment, but cutting their stuff in half, house in half, and hopefully expanding the boarders of their life to more of Jesus, and less of them.

There is a thin line between "radical," and "slap stupid."

I'm willing to take my chances.

The family agrees.

We are all in.

Here's the kicker: The house has not sold. Two days ago, we had a buyer. The bank took over 4 weeks to get the paper work in order, so our buyer bailed. We were not surprised, but frustrated with the bank is an understatement. That said, we still have peace.

PEACE.

And we are facing foreclosure.

There is rumor of another family showing moderate interest in the house. We haven't dared to get our hopes up. Why?

All I know is this: We are tired of waiting for every piece of the puzzle to fall into place. That is the approach we have always taken. If the piece didn't fall into place fast enough, we'd jam it in place with a credit card, etc.

Not this time.

We just do not care. We are done with the security that "good credit" brings. In fact, we want to break up with Credit. She's a brutal mistress, and she's had us in her clutches for far too long.

Ding our credit, see if we care.

We've struggled with the, "What is going to happen to us if my health gets really bad, and we need to charge a huge hospital bill?" "What if our car totally craps out, and we have to get one...now?"

Old Us would have caved to that.

That ain't faith.

And we are tired of the pretty picket fences that hedge in good credit, "security," and the American Dream that glistens and gleams in our perfectly planned out lives.

Give us chaos, Lord.

Take away the order of these prison walls that we have built around ourselves.

We are done with us.

Before you get all impressed with our transformation, know this: We still stink at faith. We still stumble and fall. But guess what? IT IS SO MUCH MORE FUN to live in the freedom of letting our "perfect" plans go. What we thought was best, what we were taught was best, ended up being what nearly broke us.

For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

Jeremiah 29:11

We never had the blue prints, but God does. And He knows how to lay every brick, every stepping stone, and every path. Funny thing is, we had to pluck up the picket fences to see the path. And I hope to Heaven that we don't put those fences back up. Ever.


We've been in the apartment for two and a half weeks. I was hoping to blog this when we'd sold the house. But that didn't happen. I wanted the big red ribbon to be neatly tied onto the package.

Closure.

(Closure is starting to look a lot like a picket fence to me.)

So, here we are. Smack in the center of Middle Class America's worst nightmare: FORECLOSURE (maybe).

We are okay with that.

The story is still being written.

We've been off of school almost three weeks now (we have days off to move around, thanks to our year-round school schedule). We are so ready to get back into our routine. SO. READY.

Random pics:

How CUTE is this kitchen???

(I seriously adore it!)

(A little happy turtle statue on my porch.)

I'd show you more pics, but there are too many boxes everywhere to really give you a good look, so there will be more to come.

Please refrain from well meaning advice against our crazy, risky behavior. This was not a snap decision. We don't feel that God has put up all the stops to keep us from moving into the apartment. It is in our protective nature to not take these kinds of risks. We are clinging to the hope that we are hearing clearly, even though life is about as clear as mud right now. We have clung so tightly to financial status, that any leap of faith seems crazy radical. It shouldn't. It should be second nature, but it's not. And if we screwed up, it was with hearts yearning to move to the place (city) we felt called to serve, and with lives craving less stuff and more Jesus.

If we risked it all for that, then I'm okay with failure in the world's eyes.

And if God has other plans, He will not leave us destitute.

If you feel lead to pray for us, please pray that we don't get comfortable. That we have a constant burning in our hearts to not become complacent, like we have been in the not-so-far-off-past. Pray that we'll continue to throw caution to the wind, if the Lord asks us to (be assured, He will). Pray we get so thoroughly sick of stuff that we are no longer consumers, but hands and feet that are reaching out to our community.

And as scary and exhilarating as it is,

we are surrounded by a very large community.

There are no more excuses.

Outreach is not an option.

It never was, but now it's right in front of our faces.

We are out of our element.

Country folks in the city.

It's scary.

It's awesome.

It's weird.

I am so down with Weird, that I want to friend him on Facebook. ;)

I am unfriending Normal. She'll keep asking to be my friend, so I'll have to refuse her request on a daily basis.

More on this later. 

Until then...

Cheering you on & checking the fuel gauge,

Layla