bold prayer.

we have a very exciting house update to announce! we have renters! that means we'll be moving by the end of the summer! i'm pumped, but also kinda scared out of my mind. it's quite a bit earlier than we would've moved had this not fallen into our laps, but it's definitely an answer to prayer. cool story...

about six weeks ago i went to a women's ministry event with several of my coworkers at my supervisor's church. one of the administrative assistants at family innovations, erin, was the speaker, so several of the other admin staff and i went to support her and spend some time together outside of work. i don't know erin all that well but i was excited to hear her speak. well, as it turns out, her talk was more timely and personally meaningful to me than i even really realized at the time.

the theme of erin's message was bold prayer, and she talked about her personal experience praying boldly in looking to sell their house and move their family to hudson, wisconsin. she encountered a number of obstacles, but God kept coming through and answering their bold prayers (like, "God, please let our house sell TOMORROW." and it did.). the verse erin gave us to think about was hebrews 4:16:

"let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace,
that we may obtain mercy
and find grace to help in time of need."

she had us write the verse down on a note card, and on the back, asked that we write one word to describe our bold prayer. i wrote "home."

joe and i had been talking about the timing of having another baby (no, not yet), and have talked a lot about wanting to be in a new house before that happens. our townhouse has been amazing for us the last few years, but is getting pretty tight for our family of 3 (4- george counts). having another baby there would more than max us out on space and would probably drive me to near-insanity. obviously we'd make it work if we had to, but i am not keen on making any plans (i.e. trying to have a baby) to put us in that situation on purpose. i thought, "well, the big thing i want that doesn't seem to be in reach and would take God moving in a major way to make it happen is a new house." so, i half-heartedly wrote "home," with a lot of skepticism and not much expectancy.

to be quite honest, i had pretty much forgotten all about the talk and the note card and went on with life as usual. we started refinancing and thought we would probably think about moving in a year or so.

about two weeks ago (nearly a month after the ministry event), the note card showed up out of nowhere at work. for real. i'm not claiming a ghost set it there or anything, but literally i have no idea where it came from. all of a sudden at my desk it was just there. maybe it'd been in a pile of papers on my desk (neatly organized, of course), but it really just appeared. and i thought, "huh, that's interesting." so i put it on my computer screen and have read it several times throughout each day at work since then.

here's the weird thing: within a couple days of the note card showing up is when the opportunity to potentially rent our house fell into our laps. i didn't realize the connection between the two at the time, but have come to see how these two events are completely related and are a reflection of God's ability to answer prayers that we think are unanswerable.

i never thought we would be in a position to move this early. and, honestly, financially we're probably not. but i trust in God's provision and know that He has it all under control. i believe he has the perfect house in mind for us and will help the rest of the pieces fall into place. we just have to be obedient and follow His lead.

hopefully he'll lead us to winning the powerball. kidding.