How the Love Story Ends....

I didn't see the end coming like this. Lots of people say they did. But I didn't. Perhaps because I just see life through rose colored glasses...maybe cause we've just lived in denial, as people state. Or maybe because this was simply just never one of the scenarios I ever imagined taking place. Cause, after all, when you're obedient and follow God it all ends tied up in a neat tidy little package, right? And when you choose to do the unthinkable and pour money into a "black hole" and some classify you as "missionaries" the "heathens" are always converted in the end, right? You show the love of an invisible God, you "go the extra mile", you suffer a little in American discomfort and then the people "believe" and we all go to heaven....right? But, when it doesn't happen...what WAS our purpose here? Perhaps it doesn't have anything at all to do with doing the obligatory good deed. Perhaps it wasn't about watching a man "see the light". Maybe these last 25 months have been about just learning how to forgive. How to extend mercy and be kind...to love the unloveable....to be uncomfortable for the sake of another. Maybe it was to learn total all consuming compassion for another human being. Maybe it was to learn how much I think I am "owed" in life because America and its people just don't like to think that being uncomfortable may be part of the Christian package. Chunk a few bucks...maybe even 100.00....into the mission plate, take a 7 day trip to Africa and tell a few about Jesus, sit in your air conditioned pew or your chair in the same spot at the same time every Sunday in your big comfortable church, and then go back to your work week, running red lights, road rage, plush car, warm house, running water, working toilet, your 2 or 3 flat screens, your iPad or two, teaching a few fellow Christians how to be better Christians, and return to your upper middle class American life. Everybody just seems to want the free ticket into heaven....to go to church and get the warm fuzzies to make themselves feel better about themselves...that they're good people, right? To hold up the measuring stick to the general population, average American person, and every other Christian within the church they frequent.... sit shoulder to shoulder on Sunday mornings, Wed nights, alienate kids for not adhering to their self mandated, more spiritual than you, dress codes....heaven forbid a teenage boy lust over an exposed shoulder when a 13 year old wears a chest covering, cleavageless tanktop. Chase them angrily down lengthy church hallways and sternly require them to come back and flush urinals like a "good son", voice crazy ideas of how going to the beach with family is far less important than warming a pew every Sunday and getting your holy spirit fill. To hold up that notorious measuring stick turned whipping post to each other and wage the silent war of competitiveness and who can be more spiritual than the other....church member against church member, large family against large family, homeschooler against homeschooler, mom against mom. The silent Christian war. Perhaps these two years were to learn that we're really REALLY different and radical IS just different...and people don't like it...but it's ok.  It's ok to make people uncomfortable...because what the American Christian looks like...I don't wanna be. I find it odd that the Christians are the ones condoning taking landlord to court...encouraging it, except for the random few, yet the "heathens" are the ones encouraging our support and love of this man. The number of Christians that have said "this man has dug his grave, now he needs to lie in it" are absolutely innumerable. How grateful I am for the few close friends we have been given here, that don't judge and have come to aid us in our love journey. How amazed I am by how few but how true and transparent and non judgmental the real ones are. Maybe this whole journey has just been to learn what grace and mercy truly mean...that most people will never in their life know the depth of these two words...because nobody in their right mind ever wants to suffer and know the discomfort it takes to embrace it...learn it...know it with heart knowledge. Nobody ever just willingly signs up for and embraces anguish. Not even me. But we're here...and we're learning it. As hard of a journey as its been. And it goes against every grain of thought in society that exist.

So, I never saw this end in sight. And really....this is only the beginning of a love story...or the continuation of what was begun.  Our little dungeon down in the forest....somewhere, somehow....became home. And it is now going into foreclosure. Landlord is now on his 3rd month of having not paid the mortgage. And just maybe we were brought here for such a time as this...painful as it may be. I've cried over pretty much everything...but mostly how much I hurt for landlord. This man I hated just 24 months ago. I've cried over leaving him in so much misery of his own despised life while we move on and know the hope, love and joy that we know as a family. To know that wherever we go we still have each other and the fun and laughter that is always present here. And he stays....burdened and in bondage to life. I've cried over leaving neighbors that have become family, friends that fill our home daily, leaving everything I thought I hated about this house, the seemingly pointless home improvements we have made if it all ends this way, the money "lost". I've cried over leaving sweet girl's cotton candy stripes and all the love we poured into her little space....how she coos and smiles at the contrast and her little birdhouses. I've cried over leaving our homey, painted, diaper changing bookshelf  and all of its functionality. But mostly...I've cried over leaving our landlord and knowing his hopelessness. How can you just walk away from someone hurting so much as we continue to see blessings poured out upon us and just leave him behind? It feels as though we are just leaving him behind to die while we press forward. Was this really just a brief encounter in life as we pass through? But shouldn't he be left better for having known us?

Until.....as we prayed and soul searching was taken once again to a significantly deeper level, we began to see that maybe our purpose here has actually been fulfilled and we were brought here for this day in his life. And maybe our time to go is now because the work cannot be continued with us still residing here...in the picture. This house....with improvements made can now draw double what he was asking in rent. And when we go he is now capable of drawing enough rent from this house to bring it out of foreclosure...but we are incapable of paying that much monthly. So his new rental income, because of all that has been done, will be what saves this house, perhaps saves him....without us in it. So, our time to leave has come. We have done as much as we can and the blessing will continue after we leave....can only possibly continue if we leave. So, we exit gracefully with lots of tears. If we don't go we will still have to move and home will be lost to him. But if we exit now, before the proceedings begin, perhaps it will be what saves him, both materially and on heart level. And because of it all, I'm just not the same person I was 2 years ago. I have never known such love for someone I hated so much...never shed so many tears for someone I wanted to take to court only 24 short months ago. Because of the road we have walked here, all that has been blogged and unblogged, all that we have walked quietly and all that has been voiced, I have learned how to love in ways incomprehensible to me...that I never knew possible. And forgiveness. It's a painfully, humbling thing to learn....but oh, how it frees the soul to just love and let go, not seek vindication or pursue a road filled with intention to inflict more hurt and pain on others.

And with  God's handprints all over our life, we move into a new home. After almost a hundred calls over the course of the two years we have lived here in our search for a new home...anything to escape our little dungeon....being hung up on, laughed at, scolded, and kindly declined we knew finding another rent home would prove impossible. But, as the new events have occurred and foreclosure is imminent, I randomly looked up rental properties one day, after months of no longer looking elsewhere. We knew the likelihood of finding another rental was slim to none due to all of our previous experience. If worse came to worse it had been decided children and I would return to TX to reside with family until we could build here or something could be found. Landlords do not seem to like people with 12 kids in tow, no matter your story. But this one day, this one totally random day, a 5 acre property sat at the very top of the rental listings. Pictures of dreamy little home tucked down a dirt, tree lined road, nestled safely within privacy of trees and forest with cleared, green, fenced pasture sitting beyond. Old wooden barn, 2 stalls, and play fort housed on top, beckoned for kids to fill it up. No carpet...at all. Laminate wood and concrete floors. So, I took the random chance that this might just be God....despite all the wrestling I do with him. I emailed and corresponded with owner. With no knowledge of family size she agrees to meet us. Husband and I talk with her in person for an hour, easily conversing, discussing foreclosure of our current home, laughing lightheartedly about life. As we near the end of visit husband breaks the news of family size to her.


And she is swept up with unconditional love for us.


Absolute, overwhelming, unconditional, undeniable love. She talks of how property was made for children and animals and farm life. She could think of no better family to fill up walls of home...because, after all, she raised her own children here and it needs children and chickens, horses and goats, tire swings and flourishing gardens again. And this 5 acres of green gets rain, has produced hundreds of lbs of produce in years past, has known animals and children and life. And what we could never seem to accomplish in our little house out on the dry, dusty prairie can be accomplished here. In this place of rain and sun and Eden. A creek cuts through forest and children have explored every square inch. Leaves fall in hair like mercy and grace on our lives...all around us, everywhere. And the big huge pasture beckons for dogs and kids to run freely beyond the trees in sun. Level, cleared land for massive swingset, gardens and trampolines to fill. Old flowerbeds abandoned by previous tenants beg to be brought back to life. And the landlord loves us. We assure property will be left better than when found and anything kids tear up will be replaced with something as good, if not better. She gives us full permission to paint and make the sterile white walls into a home. She agrees to installing a tankless water heater and new windows for better insulation and due to the fire escape hazard the immoveable ones currently are for kids. She loves us. She calls back with a crazy yes saying she loves what husband and I voiced about how we live life and what we believe....what we want our kids to learn in life. Says it's unheard of to meet people that have done what we've done to our current home and raise children with these lessons of love and kindness. She wants to bless us. And the spirit she sensed in the two of us and all the words that were spoken are how she wants to conduct herself in life and everything she loves....only seeing the good in people. She gives us a merciful move in date of Jan 1st but full permission to begin moving things now to ease the stress of moving 14 people. And she says she loves our family. We have been given hard floors, the return to an infinite supply, massive money saving, tankless water heater once more......one of the things we have missed the most, new, high efficiency, easy open windows, a farm, land, seeded pasture, old rustic barn, fencing, ability to garden. And the tears fall like rain.

So it is that we return to farm life, our children bubble with excitement and laughter over what is to come and how they have seen the hand of a living God upon our life once again for the millionth time. His ways are so much higher than my ways and His thoughts so much higher than the way my finite, analytical brain processes life. And when the time has come, He provides and meets needs...and heart desires. There could not possibly be a more graceful exit or happier ending than what He orchestrated. How is it possible to leave landlord so loved, with a better rental income, saving his home from foreclosure, and end up in a dreamy little farm home 200 sq ft larger than our current one and for 200.00 less a month than our current rent home? Some people call it the law of kindness, some just say it's Karma. But not even an atheist can deny the fact that God exists in this...and despite everything with which I struggle as I work out my own walk with fear and trembling. So now we scurry to hurriedly finish up projects on current home and leave it rent ready for the new tenant that will be brought into landlord's life to finish what has been started. Isn't that what it's all about in the end anyway? That we are merely tools to be used by Him, to be the hands and feet of Him, and when our time comes...to be moved on? Because no one person can do all the work. It's a series of people He uses to accomplish the final goal. So it is that we hurriedly paint trim and doors, burn remaining brush and contents of the rogue tornado I became to yard, hang kitchen cabinet doors, and leave him with ability and materials to floor this place after we move. It's not what I envisioned. It never is. But it's God and we move with Him.

"The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit."
John 3:8 

We move on. 

Kids bathroom

Master bathroom

One of the many peaceful, quiet roads we take to get to our new home. 

Our new driveway

The pasture beyond