“It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.” (Lamentations 2:22-23)
My dad has always said that one comes into her own in her thirties.
Maybe that is true.
There I was: Lowe’s parking lot. Though I had finally made it to where I was going, I had no idea where I would end up when I got behind the wheel that afternoon. Truth is, I couldn’t afford gas to drive any further. I sat in the driver’s seat, weeping, hoping my children in the backseat wouldn’t notice.
I just had to escape.
It was the year and a half that ripped and tore at our souls. The economy had plummeted, and as a home builder’s family, we were hit hard and we were hit first. The dream home Charlie and I had lovingly built together had to be sold. We no longer could afford it. This broke my heart because that home was like a hug that wrapped around me whenever my hubby was away. And he was away a lot.
The thing is, I asked for it. Before we had married, I was always advised to pray specifically for the man I would marry…to think about the characteristics I would want in a man and pray for those things. I prayed that God would give me a man who wasn’t lazy. He answered me with my Charlie. Charlie comes from the hardest working family I’ve ever known. They work hard and long hours and just love doing it. Very soon after our marriage, this became an issue. Charlie was just doing the only thing he knew: working hard and working long. But for this newly-married teenager whose love language was quality time, it caused quite the heartache. I found myself lonely and waiting. Chronically.
Ah, the waiting. Waiting for life to become what it is supposed to be.
Fast forward to the Lowe’s incident. We had been married for 8 years and had just given birth to our third son. Our “plan” had been to build a house for ourselves every two years, build equity, sell for a profit, and accumulate enough to purchase a home with cash by the time Charlie was 30. This was our third home, and I loved it. Charlie (whose love language is acts of service) had put so much heart and soul into this home as a gift to me. He had had a wrap-around driveway placed in the front so that I wouldn’t have to climb stairs with three little ones. Together, we worked our fingers raw cutting, laying, and grouting hundreds of tiles. We had spent hours picking paint colors, and had dreamed together of how our boys would love the “cowboy blue” we had chosen for their room. I wasn’t ready to sell this time.
And yet, during a down economy, God miraculously brought some buyers just weeks after we listed, and we were able to be released from a mortgage we could no longer afford.
Selling the house was hard, but it wasn’t the toughest thing we would endure that year and a half.
Click here to read Part 2: https://jeaniedianne.wordpress.com/2015/01/29/new-mercies-every-morning-part-2/
Jeanie Dianne 