Part one "My Story"

Mark 11:22 "Have faith in God, " Jesus answered.

Have you ever felt like your faith is sometimes wavy like it looks in this graphic? In the past 16 1/2 years my husband and I have been on a path of living by faith. I will admit it hasn't always been easy and there have been times I wanted to throw in the towel. I want to write a book someday, so I will practice with little clips here on my blog. So here is part 1 of my story. Not sure when the next part will come but keep visiting and in the mean time keep wondering.... to be continued!

Where are you God? I remember wondering this back in 1990 when God moved my husband, our three children ages 3, 5 & 6 and me about 500 miles away from my family that I had never been away from, the whole 26 years of my life. My husband and I decided that we were going to be the chess pieces and He, God, would be the master chess player, and where He would move us we would go.

Approximately a month before we moved we had visited a ranch for troubled boys. We heard about the ranch through, Intercristo, a Christian job placement network. After looking at the run down ranch, and talking to the program director, we left the property and fell silent. We were in awe after hearing the faith stories the program director shared with us, and couldn’t even talk. About 5 or 10 miles down the road, we both said at the same time. "What did you think?" Then at almost the exact same time again, we said, "Our house!" While we were there we were shown this run down three- bedroom trailer house that we would be moving into, while working with the boys on this ranch, if we took the job.

At this time my husband and I were doing pretty well. We married right out of high school, started a family not even a year into our marriage, and didn’t have any college degree. My husband was working in a factory making about $14.00 an hour back in 1990, I was doing in home day care, with several children, and my husband also was running a mechanic shop out of our two car garage. We had bought our first house 5 years prior when we were 21 years old, and it was on a corner lot, with a swimming pool in our back yard and a big fenced in yard for the children.

Guess what, my husband said, "are we sounding a little like the rich guy in the bible? We want to serve God but are we really willing to give up our earthly possessions to serve Him?" Wow did he step on my toes or my heart? Actually it hit both of us, and we both agreed that if God wanted us to serve Him then He would have to sell our home, because renting was not an option for us. So we called the realtor on a Tuesday, we talked, he came by and put a sign in the yard. This happened the day before the small town newspaper came out. We were thinking we have plenty of time, because this house was on the market a year and a half before we bought it and we were selling it for more than what we bought it for 5 years prior. I have something to tell you. If you are not willing to be used by God don’t tell him you are ready, if you really aren’t because he works fast. You see, the very day the sign was put in our yard the realtor called to show our house but we told him to wait until Saturday to show it because we had some painting to do. Is our God awesome or what? The couple that came to look at our house that Saturday bought our house and we moved within the next month.

So there we were packing up, and the program director of the ranch we were moving to called us. He said, "The couple that was living in the farmhouse about 2 miles away from the ranch just left today so you won’t be moving into the three-bedroom trailer house, you can move into the two story farmhouse." Is that just like Our God to try to out Bless us? Here we were trying to be a blessing and following His calling on our life. Instead He had to turn around and out Bless us by giving us the two-story farmhouse to move into. Wow, that just gives me the holy bumps all over again just reminiscing about the whole thing. Where are you God? He was right there all the time. The whole year and a half we were at that ranch, learning what ministry was all about, before He, the master Chess player, moved his players again. You want us to what? Where are you God?