God Has a Plan for Your Life – My Home Story :Part 4

I’m back with the fourth installment of my home story! If you are new, you will want to read Part 1 , Part 2, and Part 3 first. We last left off with me having this very specific desire in my heart for a certain kind of house in a certain location. My fiance was starting to get discouraged and impatient. My dad was trying to convince me to “settle” so I could just move on with things already! I was about to make the mental shift to start manifesting the dream in my heart. I will tell you how I did that, because you might want some inspiration on how to manifest something too!

 

Step 1: Tuning Out the Naysayers

 

The first thing I had to do was tune out the naysayers. When you have a very clear picture of what you want in your heart, sometimes other people don’t “get it” or think you can’t have it. They may come right out and tell you you can’t have it. They will give you reasons why it probably won’t work. They may think you are ridiculous. Ha! 😀 That’s ok! It’s often a projection of their own doubts, fears, concerns, etc. They mean well, and probably even think they are being practical, but they are stuck in their own disbelief. It has nothing to do with YOU, or them consciously wanting to be a killjoy. It is based in their own life experiences. This doesn’t have to dictate YOUR experience though. You get to create your own story. I had to stick to my focus and keep my sights set on what I wanted my/our life to look like.

 

 

Step 2: Declaring Affirmations (in my case God’s truth) Out Loud

 

The second thing I started doing was declaring (out loud) the bible verse that I have been sharing every chapter of this story thus far:

 

I used God’s truth as an affirmation. Sometimes I had my doubts, but the thing with affirmations is that even if you aren’t 100% confident in what you are declaring when you start, the words start to sink in the more you say them. I would say out loud with authority and emphasis on certain words,  

” 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. ”  

 

I dissected the power of this verse. This isn’t a namby pamby statement. This is God declaring it with certainty. He doesn’t kinda sorta think he might have a plan for your future. He KNOWS it. In my sometimes shortsighted humanness, I am not always certain about things. In fact, at times I can be quite fearful about them. What a relief to know I don’t have to be certain, because God is certain FOR me!

I looked up the definition for “declare”:

 

 

and then looked up the definition of “emphatic”:

 

 

 

This is a bold declaration folks. For I KNOW the plans I have for you DECLARES the Lord. The message is clear. And this verse, especially that last line, became my mantra.  I would repeat it over and over, both out loud and in my head.

 

Step 3: Getting a Clear Vision of What I Wanted

 

You can’t manifest something if you don’t know what you want. You have to give yourself permission to dream and make a wish list. Even if you don’t know “HOW” you are going to get it. The how doesn’t matter at this point. It’s the what that matters. Here was my dream home wish list:

• 3 bedrooms minimum. One for us, one for a guest room (or bedroom for a child perhaps), and a third room I could use for my home studio/art room/home office
• a fireplace. A real wood burning one.
• lots of light and windows. I love big windows and need light. It uplifts me! I don’t like feeling boxed in.
• a 3 season room or screened in porch room
• 2 bathrooms minimum
• a bay window or a large window with a window seat I could read a book at
• a large yard. Preferably a fenced in back yard.
• Not too much of a fixer upper. Something move in ready
• a finished basement or downstairs.
• A home in the neighborhood I grew up in (well, since high school anyway).
• must have garage
• formal dining area
• kitchen with lots of counter space, cupboards , and a nice view when doing dishes
• decent sized bedroom for us
• somewhat open floor plan a plus
• cottagey or vintage style a plus

I would think of how nice it would be to sit by a large window, or a fire, or to hang out in my own personal art room. I started to see myself living this life. Which brings me to my next step-

 

Acting “As If “

Even though we did not have a home, we were actively looking. In my mind that was pretty much like already having one. So, I began to act like I already had one, and created both Amazon wish lists and Pinterest boards to start planning how I would decorate the home I didn’t yet have. I created categories for each room of my future home. There were Amazon wish lists titled “Kitchen”, “Living Room”, “Master Bedroom” , “Bathroom”, “Home Office/Art Room” , etc. I did a similar thing with Pinterest boards.

Pinterest was the place I would go for inspiration on room colors and looks. Amazon was the place I would go to start actually collecting items I wanted for those rooms. Not even knowing what sort of house we’d get, I started planning out color schemes and had lots of fun window shopping for furniture and decor. Oh it was so much FUN to find pretty things and think I could actually have them in a home of my own one day soon. I did this for the better portion of those two years in which we constantly came in second line for homes.

I even bought a few clearance items to save in my hope chest for my future home. A lamp, fancy refrigerator magnets, pots and pans, some pretty floral arrangements, things like that. When my great grandmother passed away, the hope chest got filled larger and larger, with antique dishes and afghans, and aprons, and many other fun things. Isn’t it both silly and wonderful to plan out color schemes and rooms of a house before you even have one or know what exactly you are getting? 😀

I still have those Amazon wish lists and Pinterest boards today, and continue to dream and add to them. I was planning out and still continue to plan out, the kind of life I want to live. And let me tell you, it works!

 

 

Starting to Understand a Piece of God’s Plan for Me

 

By now you can see the mental shift that happened in me. I was more at peace with not having a home yet. I wasn’t as bitter and depressed as I had been. Hope had crept back in. I had shifted my energy to starting to let go of the house I did not get, and looking forward to having some kind of house. Although, I still doubted it would be as great as the house I thought was “the one”. While I still didn’t know God’s plan for my life, I was starting to understand part of His plan.

 

You know that whole weird dream business I had where I was told to act on a home and I couldn’t understand having a dream like that (which felt like a divine dream) a week or two too late? Even that was starting to make sense. Everything WAS going perfectly according to His plan. I just couldn’t see it, because the plan wasn’t what I had originally interpreted it to be. I took the dream quite literally and was set on the fact that if I obeyed God, I would have that house. It occurred to me that God had to light a fire under me somehow. After all, He knows my personality. He knows fear can be my stronghold and that I am prone to procrastinating on some things as a result. He had to get my attention somehow I guess!

While obeying God’s calling didn’t get me that home, it did other things for me. It got me off my butt and starting to put some action towards my future. He let me experience losing that home so that I could get out of my comfort zone and start calling realtors. I wouldn’t have felt the urgency to get that ball rolling, were it not for that dream. Who knows how long I would have sat there avoiding my future. He was preparing me for what is to come. His plan wasn’t to harm me. It quite literally was, “to give me hope and a future”.

 

The Second Dream (& Asking for Help)

 

Don’t be afraid to ask family, friends, contacts you have, to help you with your goal! I asked my Mom to keep a look out for houses that fit the location and list of what I wanted. If they had any connections that could help, all the better.

During this time that we couldn’t seem to hop on houses before they already had bids, my parents mentioned the potential for a house that would be on the market one day. My parents took care of an elderly couple who were in their 90’s and living in the hospital. They were neighbors of ours, but lived on another block and I had never met them. Which is too bad, because I can see now that I would have had much in common with the elderly woman especially (but I am getting ahead of myself). My dad had asked the man if he thought of selling his house (it pretty much sat empty for a couple years). He said no, but that it would be a great home for someone.

The man passed away, and time went on and I had put that home out of my head. It could be years before it was available and I didn’t know what the house looked like or if it would be what we were looking for anyway. Several months later I had another one of my dreams. When I say another one of my dreams, I mean the kind that seem different from my typical dreams. These dreams feel like messages from God, as odd as that may sound. In this dream, I saw an obituary in the newspaper and got the feeling I was supposed to check into the potential of the house I had put out of my mind. Ironically, when I woke up, my parents were reading the newspaper, and my dad told me the widow they had been taking care of had passed away. It wasn’t too many months after her husband had passed.

Mom went to the funeral visitation, because she had come to be friends with this neighbor during her time caring for her. The neighbor was an artist named Lilian, but everyone called her Libby. She had given Mom one of her paintings, and Mom had given her a prayer shawl while she was still living. At the visitation, Mom wanted to buy a book Libby’s son had published, which was a book of her artwork. They were out of copies, so told Mom to stop by the house sometime because they would be in town awhile yet. While at the house, she was talking to Lilian’s sons and somehow it worked out to where she was able to delicately bring up the subject of the house and her engaged daughter looking for a home. The sons didn’t live around here, and were going to be selling their parents estate. One of them gave Mom their number for me to call them about coming to see the house.

And so I did.

 

 

The First Step Towards Our Future

 

I called and set up a time for Matt to go see the house. Believe it or not, I did not go to look at it at this point. I wanted to, but I was dealing with some benign positional vertigo at the time, and truth be told I didn’t feel quite ready to take the next step out of  my comfort zone yet. I was excited, but I could also feel anxiety rising up in me. These were big steps and big decisions for me. This whole marriage and buying a house thing. So this time I let Matt scope it out first.

He went, he came back and said it was really nice and well taken care of! He told me how it had an art room where Lilian (Libby) used to paint, and a home office downstairs where Phil used to do his business. Both of which he told the sons I needed 🙂 . Being that he is a man, and a quiet man at that, I really didn’t get much of a description. And you know how we women are. We want details!!

 

So, you probably think the story ends here. You probably think I went to see the house next and that we bought the house and got our dream home. I mean this story is long enough already….when is the end coming?! Well…not today folks . HA! Because guess what? Today’s chapter ends with me finding out that although we were invited to come see the house, someone else had gotten to it first! Even though this time we had the advantage of knowing about the home immediately, before it could even go to market, with the advantage of my parents having known the previous owners. We were told that someone else had first dibs, and it was basically left that they had our number and would call if anything changed.

CRIMINY! (or as Mom would say, “Criminy to Pete!!) , Here we go again…..

Stay tuned for the next chapter, coming soon!