Walk Through ... Don't Just Read

““The Kingdom of Heaven is like…” is not a statement which introduces institutional principles. It is the beginning of a description of a place that He has been and we have not.” Bob Hamp: Change The Right Thing, Pt. 3

"This is a beautiful statement. Really. Beautiful is what came to my mind immediately. This was my revelation moment in this blog. I felt Holy Spirit whisper those words as I read them … and they instantly transformed (supernaturally) from words into a beautiful doorway, awaiting my entrance. "Walk through, don’t just read." That’s what I heard. And my heart has begun singing…" [my comment on this blog]

When Holy Spirit decides to breathe life into words, I'm generally unprepared for the moment. It hits me upside my heart like a locomotive running head long into the most ginormous pile of TempurPedic mattresses. I feel the force of the blow of truth and can hear the steaming hiss of wisdom; but instead of the impact being life-threatening, it's cushioned by grace, and the foreboding hiss is transformed into a life-giving whisper.

Revelation is caught in my heart in the same manner a water balloon is caught in a balloon tossing contest, except Holy Spirit is both the tosser and the catcher. He lobs up a balloon full of living water and then rushes over and uses a purposefully gentle motion to bring that balloon into my heart. Instead of allowing LIFE to hit his hands like a brick wall and splatter  - leaving the contents to evaporate on the ground  - He uses tenderness to absorb the blow so that same LIFE is given the opportunity to soak into my soul and become transformational.

Shock and Awe ... I Mean, Anger

Ok. So I guess I wasn't really prepared for how an apartment floor plan would translate in real life. The floor plan made everything look spacious and easy for downsizing. Real life made me think, "Oh crap. This isn't gonna be as easy as I first thought." 1100 sq. ft. looks very different in person. My first reaction was Shock. Anthony's was Anger. Not the show it kind, but the "I could feel his physical presence change when we walked in the door" kind. I wanted to look at everything, open every drawer, mentally move my furniture into each room. He walked through the place in 3 seconds (ok, it felt like that) and was like, "Okay, Babe. Ready to go?"

So it didn't quite go as planned. Does anything?

There was no arguing afterward. No big fight to get over. I just knew that seeing the size of the apartment felt like a kick in the gut to Anthony, and I half-expected it anyway. He's been vocal about the fact that he doesn't want to go back to an apartment but will if that's what it comes down to. And I? Well, I'm still a little naive, I guess. I've never really lived the true apartment life, with neighbors all around. I've lived in a couple apartments, but I've always been blessed where I lived. No huge complexes. No people above me. And when I did live in apartments in the past, I had much smaller kids and a smaller family as a whole. Really, I'm quite apartment ignorant, you could say. Maybe that's why I'm having an easier time making the mental leap to "just do this", while Anthony is trailing behind because he swore a long time ago, after purchasing his first house, that he'd never go back to an apartment again.

So after the shock wore off and we were given ample time to process our own emotions, we have come back to the place where if this is where we are supposed to dwell for a while, then we will. We've just got to make sure that "this" is God and not just us making the most sense of our circumstances.

I'm still gonna be looking online. I'm still gonna keep my eyes and heart open. This could be home for the next year. Or not.

Ready for a Change

The past week has felt heavy for me. Have I taken the time to get lost in Jesus? No, and that probably matters more than I'm willing to admit right now. But I do know that the heaviness is also because I'm in limbo and just want a new sense of purpose and direction. I'm ready for change, and I'm ready to simplify.

Living in a house this big for the past year has given me perspective that I didn't have before. I've discovered that with a big house, the responsibilities get bigger; and the cost of upkeep and time required just aren't worth the space itself, even with the beauty of the neighborhood. The reality is that we are not in a place financially to be in a house this big, and it's time to downsize.

In recent days, I've been talking to Anthony about truly downsizing and simplifying our lives and heading to an apartment for (at least) a year-long commitment. Doing this would require sacrifice on our end as a family, but it just feels like the best thing for us. I'm ready to leave the "property management" to the property managers. For now, I'm done with cleaning pools; done with mowing lawns, trimming trees and raking leaves; done with cleaning a huge house when we really only live in half of it for the most part.

So, I've been checking out every apartment complex from north Keller (Ft. Worth, really) to Grapevine and over to NRH. With our move comes the reality of being back to one vehicle again, and that has put certain requirements on my checklist of must have's. With that in mind, I've repeatedly come across a place that has actually crossed my mind many times over this past year ... the Venue apartments by Roots Coffeehouse and the NRH Library.

I'm writing this down now because I want a journal stone to look back on should this all play out the way it is in my head (or at least similar to it); and I want a place to point to that shows that God was birthing this idea ... or not.

The Venue Apartments are not the least expensive on the market, but they're also not the most costly, either. What they have/offer feels right to my heart, I'm just waiting to see if my heart matches God's choice.

The benefits:

• With The Venue located in the same parking lot as Kroger, Roots Coffee, Starbucks and the NRH Library, we'd be within a few minutes walk of necessary locales (groceries and library for school) and those that would provide a breath of fresh air from our apartment space (Roots or Starbucks).
• The location wouldn't put us any further away from Gateway's NRH campus (a huge need), actually we'd be 2 miles closer than we are now. We'd be closer to the girls for pick up and drop off. And Anthony would simply shift his commute from the 114 to the 121 freeway.
• With Starbucks a short walk away, I could look into applying for a part time job at that location and not be concerned about having a second car or not. And when Teighlor turns 16, she may have opportunities for part time work at the library or even Starbucks or Yogurt Land?!? And she wouldn't even need a car.
• And we'd be only a mile away from Taco Cabana! This probably isn't a benefit, though ... for our waistlines or for our wallets. :) But it was the yummiest thought yet!

And, being as real and transparent as I am, the thought of living in a place that's nicely decorated, with walls that match the floors and fixtures that work ... that part of apartment living really speaks to my womanly soul. No weird wall paper, no rocking toilets, no missing curtains/blinds, and windows with screens so they can actually be opened for fresh air. We could heat our home in the winter and cool it in the summer. Yes, this is all the fleshly part of me that just wants some normal expectations satisfied. There, I've said it.

So, we'll see what happens. We could be turned down for credit purposes. We could get there and not like them at all. We could have that "unsettled feeling" and choose to walk away because God's peace is not in it. Either way, like I said, I just wanted a journal stone to refer too when all is said and done. This thought process is either Godly direction or it's not. Plain and simple.

My Joy ... Your Joy

I love that God always has a way of bringing me back off my self-imposed cliffs of frustration and joylessness. Each morning, before diving into our school day, we [the kids and I] begin with My Utmost For His Highest - my favorite devotional and one the kids are old enough to understand now. This morning's writing was spot on for me.

It's payday (Yay!) and when I checked our banking balance I was immediately disappointed; two months of expenses were supposed to be included in this check and they weren't. Having already made plans on what to do with that money (switching Anthony over to Sprint from AT&T so we can consolidate and reduce our cell bill, which requires the purchase of a new phone - hence the money part), it was not the best start to my day. Being honest, I was down-right ticked!

Then it was time for school. Opening the devotional to August 31st, I was immediately caught by today's title: My Joy ... Your Joy. Needless to say, it was the soothing balm that my frustrated soul needed:

• "These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full." John 15:11
• "Living a full and overflowing life does not rest in [circumstances], but in the perfect understanding of God."
• "The first thing that will hinder [joy] is the subtle irritability caused by giving too much thought to our circumstances." [For me, a paycheck and a cell phone bill]

In all accuracy, my plans for today were thwarted, and I wasn't happy about it. I had been waiting for months for August 31st to roll around because it marked both a payday [with expenses paid] and the official end to Anthony's contract with AT&T. Now? Well, we'll see what can be arranged. I have to trust that God will honor our plan to reduce our monthly outgo, BUT in the mean time, I'm not going to allow this [circumstance] to steal my joy. Instead, I will Conquer Joy through Jesus.

If It Is What I Wanted...

It's almost 8am, but I've actually been awake since 6am. My bladder initially woke me up, so instead of trying to go back to sleep knowing that I'd just be kidding myself that I'd be able to ignore the calling of the bathroom, I got up with sleepy eyes and allowed the walls to direct me to my intended destination. Crawling back into bed, my first thought was that in the few minutes it took me to get to the bathroom and back, I was now awake. Not just oh-it-may-take-me-a-few-minutes-to-go-back-to-sleep awake, but WIDE awake. What?!?

After turning off the TV at midnight and then listening to a Gateway message on my iPod, I knew that I had not clocked nearly enough hours to satisfy the nightly requirement for rest, let alone catch up on any of the sleep I'd missed out on the past two nights since the AC broke.

So there I laid. Awake. In a dark, 75 degree, cool room. My eyes wide open. My instinct telling me that no matter how hard I wished for it, I wasn't going back to sleep. [Maybe now that my bedroom has the ability to stave off the heat of the summer day, I'll find an hour or so to curl up in bed and take a nap ... maybe.]

Not wanting to forfeit the cool of the AC for the heat of the rest of the house, I grabbed my iPod and opened Tweetdeck to see who else was awake - and had twittered any thoughts of their morning. I came across a new tweet from Kate McDonald with photos of her house remodeling, and since I follow her blog as closely as I follow my best friend's, I clicked the link and took a tour of her yet-to-be-finished home. From that blog I ended up bouncing to various other blogs of hers and came across an old one titled Jesus Tell Me What I Want #1 and then read Thoughts On Feminism, another oldie.

Both intrigued and stirred me, but the Jesus blog really got me thinking, especially two of the opening passage quotes she used:

“If it is what I wanted, why am I so disappointed when I get it? If what a man really wanted was food, how could he be disappointed when the food arrived?” ~ C.S. Lewis, The Pilgrim’s Regress

“Take a good, hard look at your life. Think it over.
You have spent a lot of money, but you haven’t much to show for it.
You keep filling up your plates, but you never get filled up.
You keep drinking, and drinking and drinking, but you’re always thirsty.
You put on a layer of clothes, but you can’t get warm...
[That is why the God-of-the-Angel-Armies said:]
Take a good, hard look at your life. Think it over.”
~ Haggai 1:5-7, The Message Bible

Lying in bed after reading this blog, I began to think about how yesterday changed the course of our lives; how 24 hours earlier I was so unsettled about signing another lease for this house and the next day the decision was made to move ... just like "that". I wasn't awake because the reality of it all had finally settled on me and now my brain was alert and in panic mode. Actually, my mind began to wonder about the ebb and flow of life itself and how we never really wake up one day expecting our lives to be much different than the day before. There's a lot of thought behind that one sentence, but my intent for this blog is not centered on that thought, so I'll walk past that rabbit trail for now.


If it is what I wanted...

Those six words really intrigued me, really resonated with me, really stopped me in my reading tracks and made me go, "Hmmm". [Things That Make You Go Hmmm. Can you hear the 80's dance song playing in your head? I can ... unfortunately.]

Do we really ever know what we want? Or is what we want consistently in flux like the seasons of the year? Is what we want supposed to change as we grow? Or is what we want just a fickle selfishness? Is what we want really tied into what we need? Or is what we want just that carrot on the end of the string that we'll constantly chase but never really obtain?

I'm not sure I have any answers to my philosophical questions. Waking up this morning, I fully realized that I won't be waking up in this house for much more than another 30 days or so. With that thought in mind, I took a picture from where I sit on my bed when blogging, looking out the window to the scene I've watched change with the seasons of this past year.

Right now the trees are still green and full of leaves. When I initially moved in, they were turning brown and getting ready for autumn. I've watched as the trees lost all their leaves, being left with nothing but a winter nakedness. I've watched rain fall and saturate the bark until it couldn't hold any more water. I've watched snow pile up and tree limbs break under the weight of it all. I've watched as the leaf buds began to appear, whispering promises of new life as spring arrived. And soon, as we close the doors on this house to move on to something different, the leaves will once again be preparing for autumn; another year of life saying its good-byes.

All that to ask, "If this house is what we thought we wanted a year ago, even to the point where we kicked ourselves for not locking in a two-year lease, how can our wants be so different just 365 days later?" Did our wants change or did the reality of what we thought we wanted shift so as not to really satisfy the unspoken wants? Those wants we settled on because 'right now' worked...

Again, philosophical questions without a desire to really dig in and answer them. Maybe the answers aren't necessary right now. Maybe the questions themselves are the first, big hurdle to cross and the answers will be revealed in due time.

Due time. What is 'due time' anyway, and how do we ever know if now is 'due' or somewhere down the road is 'due'? Ahhh ... questions.