A Piece of Sky: January 2013

"We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious, and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths." ~Walt Disney

My husband and I bought our first house in 2012. Purely by accident. We had no intention of actually buying a home. Looking at houses on-line was just another way to spend the evening: creating folders, scanning through pictures, and visualizing our furniture in various rooms. Then we saw it. Our dream home. Beautiful. Perfect. The perfect number of bedrooms, the perfect kitchen, a basement, a fireplace, a dishwasher (#1 on my list of home "must-haves"), and even a room for my piano. It was a foreclosure selling for 40% of its appraisal value. We decided to get our feet wet in the homebuying experience and scheduled a walk-through. Again, not thinking anything would come of it; we figured it would be a good learning experience. As we walked through the home, however, our readiness to critique and criticize quickly turned to, "What's wrong with this house? There's got to be something wrong with this house." Even the realtor was amazed.

As I stood on the screened-in back porch, I started praying. Praying for guidance, praying for wisdom, praying for peace. People who know me well know that making huge decisions is not in my genetic make-up. My brain fizzles out or goes on "tilt" like an old pinball machine. "What should we eat for dinner?" No worries. "Can we afford a mortgage?" Brain explodes. I was afraid. Afraid of making the wrong decision, afraid of the unknown. I won't bore you with the trifling details, but we signed the papers and now own our own home...or will in 30 years when the mortgage is paid off.

The moral of the story? Fear is a powerful thing. Fear of acceptance, fear of rejection, fear of the known, fear of the unknown. Anything we fear has power over us. It takes power over our mind and thoughts and actions. Fear holds us back. Maybe that's why Timothy went out of his way to remind us, "For God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of power, of love, and of self-discipline" (2 Timothy 1:7). God wants us to move forward in faith, but Satan uses our fear to control us, to manipulate us, to hold us back. Fear of a loved one's death, fear of being laughed at, fear of our fat jeans not fitting us. The process of buying a house was the scariest thing I've encountered thus far in my journey called life. I was so afraid of not being able to make our bills, not being able to eat, not being able to live. Even after Jon & I sat down and crunched the numbers, I was still afraid. Afraid of the unknown and what lay around the bend in the road out of my line of sight.

Typical, right? If the person in the horror movie could see what was going bump in the night, the movie wouldn't be scary. If we could see the outcome of each scary situation in our lives, we wouldn't fear. Seems great, right? So why can't it be like that? Take a look back at 2 Timothy. God gives us a spirit of power, love, and self-discipline. If we could see what was around the bend in the road, why would we need to be powerful? No need to overpower if there's no problem. No need to act in love if we knew everything would end up all hunky-dory in the end. No need to have self-discipline if we knew there was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Power, God's power, sustains us when we want to be afraid. Love wraps us up tight and lets us know we're safe. Self-discipline makes us cling to what we know is true, even when things are going bump in the night all around us. We discipline our minds to seek God and rest in Him. The opposite of fear is faith. Faith is the tool God uses to refine us. Fear is the tool Satan uses to manipulate us. Don't be afraid. Move forward. Past the bumps in the night. Around the bend in the road. Into God's future for you.

Please take a look through a few pictures of our new home. I'm not done by a long shot.