In September of 2010 we took our fourth daughter home from the hospital to our 800 square foot, two bedroom, one bath house. We bought the house in the summer of 2001 with our first baby on the way. Now, four babies later, the walls were starting to groan. (Or maybe that was just me.) We didn’t know it, but we had entered a long season of waiting.
The birth of this child inspired some big changes in our family: we started talking seriously about moving. That turned into a four year process. Yes, four. It was a period of waiting, wondering if we were doing the right thing, and trying to continue with life (including homeschooling) as best we could. In those years that passed we experienced a miscarriage, a robbery, a new pregnancy, and vandalism to our home.
We made repairs to the house. We went through two real estate agents and multiple price drops. We ended up selling the house, in 2013, for much less than we owed, which meant we had to come up with a lot of money for closing.
Before we closed on the house we were selling, we were living in an unfinished rental, and we had no idea where we were going to end up.
You might think that after we signed the papers selling our house our waiting season was over.
It wasn’t.
The rental house was old and perched on a hillside overlooking the Ohio River. No wall inside the house was plumb. We were invaded by stink bugs. My skin broke out in horrible welts that even my dermatologist couldn’t explain. The house underwent extensive repairs the entire time we lived there. (It was owned by the son of a church friend, and the rent was low.) Because of these repairs the basement was often open, exposed to the outside. Two nights after we moved in, I went into labor with Baby #5.
The worst thing about this time? No laundry facilities. No washer. No dryer. One baby boy. Four little girls. It was not a good recipe.
Weeks stretched into months. We were house hunting all the time, making huge lists to look at with our agent and reading Craigslist, Facebook, and other sources. We found houses we liked that we couldn’t get. We hated some houses that we could afford, or we worried about the neighborhoods.
The plan had been to stay a “month or two” while we found a house, but that wasn’t working out. Now we started to doubt what God wanted us to do. Did God want us to consider a larger change for our family?
My husband asked around and sent out emails to discreet friends. Should he pursue pastoring? Should he look for a more lucrative job to provide for us? He considered a complete career change that would have moved us to Texas. We prayed a lot.
Life in the rental was not life in our dream home, to say the least. There were times we felt like God wasn’t listening to us. Sometimes we felt isolated. We often felt poor.
And we felt blessed. Why?
– God used other people to bless us financially. Someone paid a month of our rent. Someone gave us quarters for the laundromat. The low rent allowed us to save for a good down payment on our next house (a fixer upper that needed repairs of its own).
– God gave us the strength to do what seemed like hard things. One of those things sounds silly now but it was a big deal at the time: learning to navigate our rental’s driveway. The house was perched on a hillside and had the steepest driveway I’ve ever seen. Plus, there was a telephone pole right at the bottom. Many of our friends and family never did learn how to get up (and worse, down) this drive. But we did. (And we never crashed into the pole.) Doing laundry for a family of 7 without constant access to laundry facilities sounds nearly impossible, but we managed.
– God showed us the difference between needs and wants. We learned that we could live without a washing machine, a dryer, a dishwasher, and a microwave. We didn’t have all our possessions, because many were still in storage. So: fewer toys, fewer books, fewer games, fewer “extras” of any type. We also lowered some of our standards. Paper plates? OK. Clothes worn and towels used more than once? Sure.
– God blessed us with lovely things to see, especially the view of the Ohio River. We watched the river and the changing seasons. My kids loved to seethe barges and boats passing. We also watched our baby boy grow and thrive. We made memories with each other that the kids still talk about.
– God taught us to accept help. I never went to my parents’ or grandparents’ houses without a load of laundry. Some friends helped us with our house hunt (and our eventual home repairs). Church friends brought meals. I much prefer never asking for help, but in this season we had to ask and we appreciated the help we were given.
In the end, I’m thankful for the way God worked out our next home. But I’m also thankful for that season of waiting to sell our first home and the season of waiting in a less than ideal rental.
I wouldn’t have chosen that time of waiting. Being the impatient person that I am, I wouldn’t have chosen one single thing about our house selling, renting, and buying saga.
And I would be a poorer Christian because of that. The God of the waiting time is also the God who answers our prayers. If you’re in a waiting season it’s hard to see what God is doing. But He is never silent or absent. He is doing something, a work that may only be obvious when the waiting season has passed. Wait on Him and His timing.
But for you, O LORD, do I wait; it is you, O Lord my God, who will answer. (Psalm 38:15 ESV)
Someday your children will look back on those days as some of their favorites. I remember as a child our family of 7 moved from IL to WI. My parents acting in obedience to the Lord moved us (5 kids, 1 dog, 20+ rabbits, the cat went awol 2 days before moving) knowing where we were to move just not WHERE–a house. A friend that my parents knew in that new town had a farm with some pickers cabins on them. He offered to let us stay there until we could find a place. Those 2-3 months in the cabins are remembered fondly by all of us kids. We didn’t have much (everything was in storage) but we had each other. One of my favorite memories–the “out” buildings. The “bathroom” had two rooms–one side was toilets–one big long room with 7 holes with different colored toilet seats in it. Each day you could use a different colored toilet to go. The other side was the showers. I don’t remember that side as much as the colored seats (I guess as an 8 year old I was impressed with having a pink and red toilet seat to use!). And every Saturday evening after I was supposed to be in bed asleep, my dad would watch All Star Wrestling (early 70’s so pretty tame) with my older brother and sister. I would would peek through the cracks in the walls between the two rooms and watch along. Oh such memories. Yes, the work was hard–we picked rocks in the fields, we picked cucumbers for shipping to the pickle plants, we worked hard as we stayed rent free during this time. But God provided so much and the memories are precious. The cabins are no longer there–long having fallen apart, but the fabric of the those days are woven into each of our lives that will live forever. And all 5 of us kids learned that God DOES provide where He LEADS. Not always in the ways we expect, but over and above what we can think or ask. I’m sure there were days my parents questioned the wisdom of the choices they had made (or at least had to answer other people’s questions), but God used those days for good in our lives–and still does. Didn’t intend to write a book, but your story took me down memory lane. One day your children will have their own memory lane stories. And God will be first and foremost in theirs too.
Hi Rhoda! Thanks so much for sharing your story…I love hearing how God shows Himself to each of us!