Tell Me a Story...

The girls love hearing stories. When they are in the car they will often ask me to tell them a story...sometimes they are more specific and ask for me to tell them a fictional story, or a story with a king, queen and other characters. The other day Hannah said, "Tell me the story about our house." And it made me think about the passage that says, "You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand...you shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise." Deut. 11:18-19 I know God was referring to the 10 commandments that He had just given them, but we need to teach our kids how God is working in our lives. He is not just a God in the Bible, but He is our God, and He is doing great things in our lives for His glory. So, here is the story that I told the girls about this house... When we moved from Boston we looked at different places online and found a great apartment to live in. It was tiny, but it had just the right amount of space for all of us. And it was next to a playground where other people came to play, so we were able to quickly meet people and make lots of friends. We invited friends to play in our tiny apartment and we had a great time. While we lived there we looked at a lot of houses in the area to buy, but every house that we tried to buy seemed to be bought by someone else. We were really discouraged and so I suggested one night that we look at renting a house for a while, that way we have a little more space and we could still try to buy a house. Most of the houses in the area were too expensive for us to buy, but there was one house that was just a little more than our apartment. We were worried that the house was not really for rent, and that it was really a scam. We called the man who was renting it, Mr. Craig, and he said that a lot of people were coming on Sunday and asked if we could come between 10-12. We had church until 11:30, so we said we would be close to 12, but that we would like to come. He waited for us, and when he showed us the house he said that he had seen a lot of people that day, but that he wanted to rent it to us! Praise God! We had considered skipping church to see the house, but knew that if it was where God wanted us nothing could stop Him from putting us there. So, we moved in and knew that we wanted to bless other people in our neighborhood with the house that God gave us, so we had a BBQ and asked the neighborhood to come. Lots of people came and we met most of our street that day. We played outside a lot with other kids, and had the kids over to our house to play. We have always seen this house as a gift from God, and hope that we have been good as opening our house to our neighbors and others who need and want love. Ironically I told her this story as we were driving to Target to pay a bill for our neighbor who is sick and would have otherwise been late with her payment. It's not always easy to love our neighbors, and I am grateful that Hannah asked for a story that reminded me what a gift this house is, and what a gift my neighbors are. I am also grateful that she reminded me of this story as we consider where to live next, especially now that we are even more concerned about where the girls will attend school. When we moved it we moved based on what we could afford, and Mira Mesa was the place! Now we are trying to combine what we can afford and what schools we want the girls to attend. We are praying for God's leading, provision and protection. We know that God gave us this house at below market rent, and we know that God will take us to any place He wants, and that is where we want to be!