God Has a Plan for Your Life – My Home Story Part 3

It’s time for the third installment in one of my favorite personal testimonies of hopelessness to miracles! If you missed parts 1 & 2 you will want to catch up. Part 1 is HERE, and Part 2 is HERE. We last left off with me finding out that I lost the home I thought God had for us. I was angry and confused, still not able to see God’s plan for my life.

While the house thing was a done deal, I still had some healing to do with my health issues. I am sure being stuck in bed in pain didn’t help my mood. That and the fact that once I WAS able to walk again , the house we lost was literally right there staring at me every day as a reminder. Of course several people tried to encourage me by saying that God had an even better house in store for us. I had a hard time believing that. How on earth could anything beat that house? Anything we could afford that is. It seemed like a once in a lifetime opportunity to get such a nice (and large) home that would normally be out of our budget. That was the discounted price of a lifetime. Everything else seemed to pale in comparison.

Experiencing Depression & Temporary Hopelessness:

Between my doubt that God would ever have something “better” in store for me, and the physical pain I was in that Summer, I had some depression for awhile. I started to feel hopeless about my future. I think it was about more than just losing the home. This was the culmination of a previous decade + of losses of some kind or another, and having patience as I very slowly worked at re-creating my life, after it all seemed to unravel by age 19. Up until this point, by the Grace of God, I hadn’t suffered from depression (despite my circumstances). A host of physical health issues, and lots of fear, insomnia, panic attacks, and traumatic events, yes. Yet somehow I had not become bitter, and had kept my joy in the midst of suffering. I had hope and faith in God and was living inspired.

Maybe it was because the challenging things kept piling up. I guess this last disappointment sort of brought things to a head. I started to wonder how I would ever get married, have a home of my own that I loved, and move forward in life. The hopelessness I felt led me to finally decide to seek some help for the first time, as I was tired of going it alone. Not having health insurance at the time, I chose a licensed Christian counselor. It did help me get through that difficult time and strengthen my faith in God again, even though it turned out to be a bit of a disaster in the end, because this person wasn’t very professional and had some personal issues of their own that were projected my way. I will kindly leave their inappropriateness at that and have gratitude for the good parts.

The House Hunting Continues…

Reaching out for help did serve the purpose of at least giving me the boost I needed! I began searching for houses again online and kept a close eye out for homes that came up for sale in this neighborhood, which was where I really wanted to live. I moved so much in my childhood, and was now old enough to want to settle down. I never did like moving much, and I didn’t want Matt and I to begin our marriage in a starter home, only to have to move again later. I just wanted to find a house I loved that we could grow old in. One house. One move. The needs that I had and the vision in my heart was pretty specific. The location especially. It was such a small specific area I was looking at, that I didn’t know how long we would have to wait before more homes became available.  It may sound odd to be so picky, but I knew what I wanted and didn’t want to settle.

As it turned out, other homes kept popping up for sale in this two year time frame after we lost the “dream home”. At least half a dozen or more. Every time a new one would pop up, I would get excited! But something discouraging kept happening. Every single time I called a realtor, the homes would already have an offer on them. It didn’t matter how fast I was! I would look at the websites daily for new listings, and would even call on houses that were literally just listed that day, and they would have accepted offers. This wasn’t happening with other homes on the market. Only the ones I was interested in.

This went on for two years. Two years of always being second in line and losing out on house after house, no matter how fast I acted. There were only 2 homes that didn’t fly out the door immediately. One was a two bedroom 1 bath, small home on a slab (no basement). The other was a nice larger home, but it was way too much of a fixer upper inside. The amount of money we’d have to sink into to it to redo it would make this home out of our budget.

I remember my fiance getting so discouraged about it that he was ready to settle for just about any house on the market that we could afford, just to have a home. My dad also started to say that it was impossible. I wouldn’t get the specific home I wanted and would have to settle for something less or I would be waiting for a decade.

Well I had gotten my moxie back and wasn’t giving up on that vision God planted in my heart! It was a small mustard sized seed of faith, but God says that is all we need….

“You don’t have enough faith,” Jesus told them. “I tell you the truth, if you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it would move. Nothing would be impossible.” – Matthew 17:20 NLT

Stay tuned for the next installment of my journey from hopelessness to miracles, as I make the mental shift and start to manifest my God sized dream!

With Love,

Rebekah

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