Almost nine years ago, I bought a town home. I spent four happy years with two different roommates before I met and married my husband, Kevin. Then he moved in, and we spent our carefree newlywed days here. Next came a baby, and then another. And now — one week from the arrival of our third child — we are moving out.
This house reminds me of the ways God has been with me during the past decade. He was with me when I was single. The Bible studies. The comedy improv practices. The late-night roommate conversations. The tears of loneliness. The prayers that God would provide for the deepest desires of my heart. Life and fellowship and dependence happened here.
He was with me the night I left my dining room table — strewn with newly-minted Wordless Book bracelets prepared for VBS — to meet a friend for a late-night coffee and met a tall, good-looking barista who told me he planned to be a children’s pastor. That night, I said, “I could do VBS every day for the rest of my life,” and he thought, That’s my wife.
God was with me as that wonderful man, with the kindest eyes in the world, pursued me, and we worked through issues of purity and submission to the Lord in our relationship. Dinners of slightly-burnt pizza, conversations about our dreams, tears shed over past mistakes, movie nights (mostly the children’s animated films we both enjoy), and late-night chats on the front porch. God was there for all of it. Kevin and I never wanted to quit talking on those nights, and six months after we began dating, we were married.
God was with me when my husband moved in and gave my minimalist home “a man’s touch” with his impeccable taste. God blessed us as we shared our first Thanksgiving and Christmas together and soaked up the joy of marriage. Then, in the spring, we learned a little boy would be joining us the following Christmas. And he did.
God was with me when I left my full-time job of 10 years to be a stay-at-home mom, and freelance writer and editor. From our dining room table, I wrote blogs and articles, while my son napped upstairs. His sister arrived 20 months later, beautiful and sassy, with her daddy’s nose and dimple. Children filled this little home with greater joy than I could have imagined and greater hardship than I’d ever endured, as our son encountered two serious childhood illnesses before the age of 2.
Through everything, God was faithful. Nine years ago, when I moved into this home as a 27-year-old single woman, He knew everything that would happen within these walls. The conversations, the laughter, the joy, the sorrow, the life. And He was no less God and no less good in any one season. Instead, He gently guided me through them all and gave me what I needed in each one.
Today, as we move out I am encouraged that God knows all of the details of our next home, too. He holds our next steps in His hands. And though our new home is lovely, the words of Isaiah 43:19 spring to mind. “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” Whatever the next season holds, I know God will make a way for His plans to prosper. Whatever you’re walking through, be encouraged by the “new things” He is capable of doing.
