Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.
Philippians 4:6-8
Such powerful words. These are probably my favorite verses in the Bible. I memorized this back in 2nd grade for school and they have brought me such comfort throughout my life.
These last few weeks, I have needed to remind myself daily to relax, calm my anxiety, and pray. We have a lot of changes coming our way! The short of it is this: moving to Fulton, MO and buying a house. But with that comes: saying good-bye to people we dearly love in the KC area {one of my best friends JUST moved back to KC from Texas}, leaving teens who we care about with our whole hearts, moving out of a house I have become quite fond of and am obsessed with the backyard {really, it's amazing}, making the biggest purchase of our lives!, preparing for our 3rd child {a girl!!!}, changing doctors again, Alan changing jobs, packing, then storing our stuff, then moving and unpacking. I think that is it...? SEE! This is what goes through my mind and then my anxiety starts to build but the the Holy Spirit reminds me of these verses. Do not be anxious about anything, but in EVERY situation, pray and petition God and He alone will send peace that is beyond what I can even begin to understand. That stuff is not worth focusing on. Think about things that are true, right, pure, praiseworthy!
Oddly enough I feel that peace right now. Isn't God so good!?
So, you may be wondering why all this. Why are we moving? When we accepted the call into youth ministry at Southwood, Alan had a steady schedule at a full-time job which allowed him to be home by 4:30pm every day, only working 4 days a week, and rarely a Saturday. That allowed for ample family time as well as time to invest in others, i.e. teens. Since last March, his j.o.b. has required more and more of him causing enough stress completely on it's own, but then you add ministry and schooling on top of that and you have one very over-worked man before even adding family to the mix. Alan and I both saw that the demands outside our home were becoming too much. We both began to pray and petition God for direction. Something had to change but we were not exactly sure what or how. Alan applied for other j.o.b.s that would come with a more constant schedule and still allow him to be in 'paid' ministry, no such luck. Okay, more prayer. We explored other options and received a closed door, followed by a closed door, followed by a close door...you get the picture. Then the thought came to moving back to the town we both grew up in and where all of our family lives. We knew that we needed time to restore our relationship and build our family back up and in Fulton we will have support from both families and of course, babysitting! Plus, Fulton is a much smaller, slower paced town. So we continued to pray and we looked at our options there...
And out of no where, bam, an easy transfer to the office supply store which Alan currently works for was available in a near by city. He knows the manager and she practically begged him to come. She was also able to guarantee him a set schedule! And this store would be much slower paced than his current one. Alright, but what about pay? Columbia obviously has a different pay scale than the store in Overland Park. And once again, he received more than enough to cover our monthly expenses. So, okay, now what about some where to live? We knew we would have family kind enough to allow us to stay some where for a short amount of time, but that was not a permanent option for us. A week and a half ago, we took a trip to Fulton expecting to look into renting something only to find that what we would need for our growing family would be way out of what our budget could afford. Sad. What about buying? We looked into it knowing the max amount we could pay for a mortgage payment and that amount gave us just enough house to be more than comfortable. Alright, this is looking good. Spoke to a realtor who was able to show us house after house all weekend on such short notice and we found the one!! I still get overwhelmed at how perfect it is for us at this time in our lives. God had us in mind. Well, we are new to the whole buying a house thing so we had both of our Dads {who both have a construction background and built both houses the currently live in} look at it and it passed their inspections. Made a low offer which was countered by a much higher one, and then made our second offer expecting to have to go up more in order for the seller to accept. To our complete shock, our realtor called us on Saturday and told us the seller accepted!!! Our realtor said she about fell out of her chair when she got the news. She thought the list price was more than a fair purchase price for this house compared to similar ones sold in the last year. God is SO good!! Tomorrow is the inspection and if all goes well with that and the appraisal we close on July 13th.
During the time when we were contemplating moving to Fulton, I kept asking God, 'If this is not your will for us, please, close doors. We want to follow your will!' But time and time again, the doors kept opening and we kept moving through them. I have no doubt that we are going where God is taking us and although it is so very hard at time, I know the reward is great. God has a plan and I am willing to follow!
I selfishly ask that if our family comes to mind that you would lift us up in prayer during all this change. We want His will to be done!
