Home: The Blessing of 2020

Before I entered high school, I decided to go and live with my father. I was 13 going on 14, and it was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make. Just thinking about it makes me tear up.

But when I made that decision, I knew I still had a home to go back to. It was the house I’d grown up in. I’d go back and visit my mom on the weekends., and I’d stay in my childhood room. I was rooted. I felt grounded.

But then as my parents officially divorced my junior year of high school, my childhood home was the main battleground. My parents disagreed on if and how to sell it. And then, all of a sudden, my childhood home was stolen away from me. It was sold, and my mom packed up my things and gave them to me. I had no “home” to return to.

Nowhere like home

After that, my father and I moved in and out of houses throughout high school. Then, the summer before I went to college, my dad and I settled in a condo. I had something to come back to, even if it wasn’t fully “home.” Since college, I’ve lived in five different apartments, five different locations, and four different states.

It was exhausting.

I yearned for somewhere to ground myself. It was a cry from the pit of my stomach: “God, please, give me a place I can call home.”

Learning to trust

Throughout that time, though, I learned how to love and trust God in the instability. Although I wanted a home, I knew that God was faithful. I found some amazing jobs, married an awesome guy, and built solid friendships. God gave me snowshoes on the quicksand, and somehow I made it.

Then, 2020 happened.

Right before the pandemic hit the US, Joe and I were figuring out where to go and what to do with our lives. We didn’t want to stay in our apartment, and Joe wanted to search for different employment. All the doors seemed to be closing in our faces, though. We wanted to eventually buy a house, but we had no downpayment. Joe wanted another job on the water, but it didn’t seem anyone was hiring.

A town in the middle of nowhere

Then, out of the blue, a friend of ours textedJoe a job opportunity he found on Facebook. It was the weirdest thing. It was an hour away, and we would have to live there. I felt a peace, though, and I gave Joe the go-ahead that I would be okay if he took the job.

We both went to the interview, and we saw the apartment we would live in. It was TINY - at least 100 sq ft smaller than the shoebox we were currently living in. It had ugly green walls and a decades-old oven. It was hideous, honestly. I felt a tad trepidatious, but I couldn’t shake the feeling we needed to take this opportunity. Joe and I got lunch at one of the five restaurants in the town, and we agreed to take it.

This was January 2020. Joe would start the job next month. We planned to then go to Australia, and we would move when we got back - the first week of March.

Home in the Heartache

We all know what happened next. The week after we moved, the US shut down. Instead of an hour commute, I was now working from home. Joe’s old job closed, as did the other places he was interested in. We were both employed, away from the apartment building at one of the epicenters of the pandemic, and figuring out life in our new rural town.

The months we spent there were some of the hardest but most joyous of our marriage. We just had each other, but we needed to lean on one another to make it through. I was getting burnt out at work; Joe was missing the gym and the community he had there. Then, our country went through our racial reckoning, and I was wrecked emotionally.

I put my energy into turning our tiny apartment into a sanctuary. I knew we weren’t going to be there forever, but I wanted to make sure it was a beautiful place to live. I decorated; I organized. You know in Harry Potter when they have those tents that are ten times bigger on the inside? That’s how our apartment felt sometimes.

We lived on land with a huge field next to it where Stella got to frolic off the leash. We were five minutes away from the Potomac River. God restored my soul as I would step out into nature and just breathe in the fresh air. But it wasn’t supposed to last.

Letting go of paradise

I could have stayed in that apartment for six more months. I was so happy, but I was also comfortable. It was scary to think about moving twice in one year. I had pleaded with Joe: “I can’t move again. Please. I don’t want to move again. I can’t do it.”

But Joe’s job got super stressful, and he needed out. After weeks of going back and forth, he called me during a super stressful day at work. He was at his breaking point. I had already struggled with God. I had gone through the stages of denial, anger, grief…now it was time for acceptance. The Lord gently asked, “Do you love this apartment or Joe more?” I had to choose between my own security and Joe’s sanity. Before I knew what I was saying, I said, “Okay, let’s move. I’m calling Omar.”

We hung up the phone, and I called our realtor friend in tears. We needed to find a place, and we needed to find a place fast.

We looked at houses the next week.

Finding home

We looked at five houses that day. Our house was smack dab in the middle.

I fell in love the minute I walked in. As soon as I opened the door, I had the biggest smile on my face. It was perfect.

What I think is hilarious about this is that I kept seeing this house on Zillow, but I didn’t want to look at it. I'’s across from a military base, so the barbed wire fence isn’t entirely “aesthetic.” There’s no central A/C, and your girl needs A/C. The cellar is great, but it has low ceilings.

But I walked in and knew. When I sit upstairs in my now office, all I see are trees and mountains. Our house stays relatively cool on warmer days, and we can add A/C units. The cellar is a cellar, but it doesn’t affect our everyday lives.

I was so resistant to this house for the strangest reasons, but when I think about it, it’s everything we want and need. It’s perfect to grow a family in. It’s in a great location for the both of us. We bought it at the absolute perfect time.

If we had started looking for a house when I wanted to look for a house, which is right about now, there would have been no options for us. Believe me, I’m on Zillow every day. The housing market is insane right now. Looking now would have been insane.

When we put down the offer, because we’d had free rent for about six months, we saved up just enough money for a down payment and closing costs. And then the Lord blessed us further so that we could pay for some fixes and needed organization items.

Finally

Now, after almost 20 years of feeling so unstable and like I was going to have the rug pulled out from under me, I feel at home. I can see myself living here for a while.

But what’s funny is that I still look at Zillow. I dream of the next house we could move into. I’m no longer scared to see beyond the home we have now.

I feel secure enough in God’s blessings that I know that when it’s time to move, He will bless us with something even greater than anything we could imagine. He already has!

God took me from being a person who moved all the time, desperately wanting to feel secure in a place, to finally being a person secure in herself with a beautiful home to live in.

Where I only saw darkness, now I see potential. Where I was too scared to go, now I leap forward.

Final thoughts, and of course, a prayer

For most of my life, I’ve tied blessing to achievement. If I am good enough, if I am smart enough, if I am faithful enough, then I will be blessed. But God turned that idea upside down and shook it out of me.

I was a wreck last year. I fought tooth and nail to remain faithful to the Lord. I would cry out to Him in anger; I would sit in a puddle of my own tears. I didn’t know if I was worth anything.

But even then, God blessed me with one of the deepest desires of my heart - to have a place I could call my own. I own a home. I never thought I’d say that. I dreamt about it, but it always seemed in the distant future.

God blessed us beyond measure, and all I had to do was trust in Him. All I had to do was take the step forward into the water and get my feet wet. Then He parted the seas and showed me what He could do.

I am in awe. And Lord, I pray I can pay this blessing forward. I pray our house becomes a sanctuary for others. I pray it is filled with laughter and love, not just of our immediate family but of our friends and loved ones too. I dream of game nights around the dining room table and cookouts in the backyard. I pray this blessing blesses others.

Lord, thank You for loving me when I am at my lowest. Thank You for blessing me when I don’t earn it. Thank You for showing me who You are every day. God, make me more like You so I may bless others in Your name. Amen.