The house on James St

So, here I am posting again, because my beautiful baby girl has been a lot happier the last two days. I am doing a lot to try to ease the colic, including a strict feeding schedule and I am literally not eating anything. Bread and water is about the extent of it. But, she is not screaming and my whole house is a lot more peaceful. Three days ago during one of the crying spells Lu plugged her ears and yelled, "I can't take this anymore!", went into her room and shut the door. Mae seems to be a little more patient and just says, "don't cry baby, Mia" as she tries to shove a paci in Mia's mouth. To Mae, the paci solves all problems. Yes, my 2 and a half year old still has a paci. Sue me...but if you do, just so you know, joke's on you because I don't have any money, and all my valuables are on a boat headed to New Guinea! Ha ha!

Anyway, so after the incredible story I told you yesterday, I thought I would tell you another one today...

When we decided to go to East Asia, we had to sell our house. The church where JM worked agreed to pay his salary for 2 months after we left as a way to support us, and it worked out that we would stop getting that salary at the end of December. If we carried our mortgage payment after that, we would have been in BIG trouble. There was literally no way we could afford it. We bought our house during the "housing bubble". Anyone remember that? When houses stayed on the market for like 3 days before they sold? Yeah, that seems like a million years ago. Well, we sold it right when that bubble burst. There were 4 houses on our street for sale, including the house right next door, and we needed ours to sell in 2 months. We were a little nervous, but trusted the Lord.

We hired the same realtor who sold us the house because she gave us a discount on her commission, and it didn't take long to realize that she was not a believer. She was going through some very difficult things in her life at the time, and it was obvious that she was struggling. One day JM came to me to tell me that he felt like God wanted him to tell her that our house would sell before January first because God was going to sell it. I told him that was great, but I think we were both a little nervous about what would happen if it didn't sell. We knew God could do it and would if that is what He promised, but I think we both doubted whether or not this was really from God or just what we wanted. Well, JM obeyed and told her. She kinda laughed and brushed the comment off, but 2 weeks later we had an offer on the house. After a little negotiating we accepted their offer. We closed on the house on DECEMBER 29th!! It was a Friday, the last business day of the year. If we had closed any later it would have been January!! We were shown once again that God is faithful, and he used the situation to show someone else who didn't know Him that faithfulness.

Our realtor couldn't close with us because she had a c section that same day, but we made sure we told our co worker what happened and to make sure to reminder her of what we said! The house was beautiful (see that big beautiful porch, I loved that thing!), and we did A LOT of work on it, but it was very obvious that God sold it, when He said He would. The house is actually for sale again, and has been for almost a year now. The people didn't trash it or anything. In fact, they made more improvements on it. Whenever we go home, we always go by there. We do have some great memories there, but the best is the memory of when we left. A memory of God's faithfulness. There's none better than that! It makes me think of this verse:

"I will sing of the LORD's great love forever; with my mouth I will make your faithfulness known through all generations." Psalm 89:1

**disclaimer- although I love this verse and whole heartedly agree with it. I will not be "singing". I think instead I will be speaking, shouting, writing...you get the point. I am pretty sure that if I sing of the Lord's great love, people will run screaming with their fingers in their ears and yelling, "I can't take this anymore!" and that is not what I want. Amen