God
Surprised Us
Butch and I are
still a bit overwhelmed at the goodness of God.
Close to a year and 1/2 ago,
I quit my job at the prompting of the Holy Spirit.
The timing made no sense
whatsoever.
I was working for a company
which owned a chain of weight control centers (both corporatly owned and licensed dealerships).
I had just been given
a promotion in my job from training licensed dealerships to directing the corporatly owned centers in Orlando,
Florida.
We had only just moved to
central Florida because of my job (we had been here less than a week).
Butch had given up his
job with a concrete company in the Florida Pan Handle in order to relocate for my job, and he had not even found
emplyment down here yet, but he was in agreement with my quitting--in fact, the Holy Spirit spoke to him first about
it, and he urged me to be obedient.
I was willing but felt I
needed to wait until Butch was employed, so we could give up my income with less stress.
God had other ideas. The
call was for "right now", and the Lord made that abundantly clear.
We both knew we had heard
from God, so, in obedience to the Holy Spirit's direction, I quit my job immediately.
Butch was hired fairly
quickly after that, driving for a local concrete company, but it was a given that we would need to give up the,
rather large expensive, house we were leasing and find something more affordable.
In fact, our entire
lifestyle required a good downsizing.
We found a tiny mobile
home in a quiet "snowbird" park located on a beautiful lake (snowbirds are northern retirees who come south every winter),
and we spent a year learning how to live on one income (with a huge chunk of it automatically deducted from each paycheck
for child support to Butch's children from a previous marriage).
Things were tight financially,
and the mobile home was the oldest, least kept up home in the park, but we knew we were exactly where God wanted us, so the
year was a predominantly happy time while we waited for further instructions from the Holy Spirit.
There were many times I had
to repent of murmuring and being ungratful for God's provision.
The home had been owned by
an elderly woman who had allowed it to become somewhat run-down, and in addition to that, it had sustained some hurricane
damage the same year we moved in.
The owner considered the
home to old to invest money into for renovations or extensive repairs and told us that before we moved in--thus the low,
affordable rent.
But I confess, I did grow
very weary of dealing with attitudes that people just couldn't seem to hide about what they thought of our choice
to remain in the tiny, somewhat dilapidated place, but again, we knew we were in the center of God's will for
us and we were committed to staying put until we were 100% positive of God's direction.
Our home wasn't all bad.
It was located in a quiet
little park situated on a beautiful lake. We couldn't have asked for a better location. We had lots of neighbors
in the winter and practically the entire park to ourselves all summer.
Our driveway was no more
than 30 feet from the lake, and we enjoyed the birds, ducks and wild life (the gators and foxes thankfully kept
their distance).
The little place really
had a beautiful setting, which we enjoyed immensly.
The end of this story is
this:
I was chatting with one of
our neighbors, who has repeated mentioned how much they enjoy having us live in the park, and I mentioned that Butch
and I were fairly certain we were going to be looking for a more permanent home soon after the first of the year.
The offer was made immediately
to sell us one of the mobile homes in the park (they own several, and this is one of the few parks in central Florida
where the property the mobile home sits on is sold with it).
The asking price was more
than fair along with an offer to give us long term easy financing.
The bottom line is ths, within
48 hours, we moved into a bigger, nicer, mobile home than the one we have been in for more than a year, and
owned the property it sat on as well.
We are paying $100 per month
less for a place of our own than we were paying for the dilapidated place we were previously in, and it will be paid off in
only 10 years!
Isn't God good?
And all that never
would have come to pass if we had stuck our noses up at God's provision last year when we first laid eyes on
the little place we have now moved out of!
