I clicked the site and started looking.
The website had been forbidden, off-limits for me until now. If you’ve ever known house-searching obsession you know the one:
RMLS.
Part of letting our house-dream die was committing to quitting the search. The mortgage-rate checking and the browsing through homes for sale. All throughout the year there had been many homes we’d found, fell in love with, then lost as they all sold before ours did. So I quit the search altogether and for the past month didn’t go on the forbidden site a single time. It was just a simple way for me to tangibly keep my eyes on Jesus and not circumstances. (And it was SO helpful — a life lesson to be sure.)
So when ours was pending, I carefully navigated my way onto the site, expecting, in all honesty, to find a miraculous jewel of a house all specially picked out for us. Somehow I figured that “by faith” if I waited then God would have some dream-house listed for a dime.
Nope.
No dream-houses and certainly none for a dime. All the ones we’d thought decent were now pending as well. None of our previous interests were still on the market.
Hmm…
We drove around Monday night, got the kids an ice cream cone, and passed by dreary run-down house after dreary run-down house. (Mind you, we don’t mind a little fixing and face-lifting but we’re not spending God’s money on a house about to fall down!) Hmm… We drove back home, put the kids to bed, and fell into our own bed, exhausted.
As we sat and prayed Jeff remarked, “This is the only time this entire year that we haven’t had a plan.” Funny how we both felt strangely happy about it. We always had some sort of plan this past year, and now … none. I leaned over and smiled, “We don’t know anything, but we know Him. He’s all we need to know.”
On the one hand, it really doesn’t matter. Our kids will be happy wherever, we’ll be happy wherever. On the other hand, I want whatever story God wants to write. I want His fingerprints. I want whatever it is that will tell the world, “Our God is so good!” As Joy said yesterday in Bible study, “God is not pleased when we perform for Him, He’s pleased when He performs for us.”
I want whatever story will show how cool God is. How He always performs for His kids. I don’t know how that will look, it might just look like Him giving us grace and peace in the middle of limbo. It might mean providing some big cool thing, it might not. But whatever it looks like, it’ll look like Him.
That’s what I’m looking for.
{Can you see His fingerprints on your story today? Are you looking for Him? He’s all we really need to know, amen? Thanks for reading.}