In Hope of a New Day: Chapter Nine.

'Treacherous Hope'




After all of the crazy confirmation and blessing that we had received about this house, you'd think I would have been floating on cloud nine all the way to the closing table, nary a drift of worry crossing my blissful mind... am I right?

I mean, surely, after a person has such an amazing experience as that- gifts from anonymous donors and dreams that become reality and provision only moments after taking a leap of faith- you'd think that a person like that would have no reason to doubt or grumble or fear ever again!

May I direct your attention to the Israelites who wandered in the desert for 40 years?

That is totally me.  I would have fit right into that group of ol' stiff-necks.  I mean, they were led out of slavery through a sea split in two! They followed a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night!  Water was spewing from rocks and and they woke up every morning to find miracle-food growing on the ground in front of them!  And yet... they grumbled.  They complained.  They kept trying to devise ways to go back to Egypt and get rid of Moses for good.  They didn't believe in God's goodness toward them, even after all they'd seen with their own eyes.  And they were not just reading Bible stories about what God had done one time, they were ACTUALLY drinking rock water and eating honey flakes called manna and walking on solid ground through a canyon made not of rock but the waters of the Red Sea.  Oh, and their shoes never wore out, through all those 40 years. Even still, they doubted.

I am no better than they.

After we'd accepted the counter-offer on the house, I spent the next few weeks trying to convince myself that it was all too good to be true... that I needed to be preparing myself for the moment when it would all get pulled out from underneath me and all my hopes would be dashed.  It was now mid-February, and we weren't meant to close until April 2nd.  Inspections were sure to reveal some disastrous blemish!  Financing was sure to fall through at the last minute!  I didn't tell many people about the house, so that I wouldn't have to explain anything after it came to nothing.  I didn't allow myself to mentally arrange furniture in the rooms, nor did I let myself daydream about the sunsets or the schools or the large piece of land my boys could run and grow on.  I avoided thinking about the house like it was the plague, and I picked up my security blanket of... grumbling.




I furrowed my brow.  I started planning for the worst.  Expecting it, even!  Every time Chris would talk about the "new house", I mentally scolded myself to not believe it until it was actually, irrevocably true.  And as I dwelt longer upon these thoughts of "this is too good to be true and therefore will not be given to me", I started to believe them.  And as I started to believe them, I got angry.

Now, I believe that there is some wisdom in guarding yourself against disappointments, when the things you are hoping for are on this temporal earth.  After all, the only hope that is anchored secure is our hope in God and all that He has promised to those who believe in Him: the promise of heaven and His victory over death.  But there's also this pesky kind of hope that springs up in the human heart whenever good things are on the horizon... and what are we supposed to do with that??  Strangle it to death, as I was trying to do??

I can see now that my fault came when I started filling my mind with my own truth, rather than God's truth- the things He says about Himself in the Bible.  I was clinging to the 'worst case scenario' in the name of self-protection, when I should have been clinging to the truths of who God is and resting in His promised protection.

He loves me.  His plans for me are GOOD.  He is the anchor of my soul.  He is a very present help in times of trouble. He who keeps me does not sleep nor slumber.  If He is for us, who can be against us? Though the earth gives way, we will not fear.  He is our refuge and strength, our strong tower.

These would have been much more life-giving and faith-building thoughts to hold on to in those weeks of uncertainty... when my very hopes and dreams were on the line.  I should have stayed myself on Him and Him alone.  Instead, I hung on to my own philosophy: "If it all falls apart, at least I'll be able to say 'I told you so!'"

Oh, if I could do it over again, I would have waited on God in faith, rather than stewing angrily in my fortress of self-protection, with its tissue paper walls and quicksand foundation!

Thankfully, God did not abandon me to my huffy-puffy state.  He came and rescued me from myself and lifted my chin up.  And He did it all with such gentleness and love, despite my crossed arms and dug-in heels!  I will be forever grateful.

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One Saturday evening, Chris made plans for us to drive up to the house, without the boys, and he brought along a bottle of wine and two fancy glasses.  For the entire 30 minute drive up there, I was steeling myself against treacherous hope, and filling my mind with thoughts of "this probably isn't going to happen, so don't let your heart get excited".  The constant effort it took to keep my mind off of this house was taking a toll on me.  I was weary and tired and on the edge.

He pulled the car around the back of the property, behind the big barn, where all we could see was land and trees and sky and horses.  It was cold outside.  I felt like a trespasser.  (Technically, I guess I was. heh.)  He opened up that bottle of wine and he poured me a glass, and then he reached for my hand.  We walked the property and sipped our wine and talked.  As my feet walked that patch of earth that night, something miraculous happened.  All those heavy days of self-protection and doubt and anger started to melt away, and I felt... hope.  Hope in God.  Hope that the God who'd brought us this far would not abandon us now in the ninth hour.  Hope that, even if this house didn't become ours, there was a good and sovereign reason for this all to have happened.

By the time we got back to the car, I felt one hundred pounds lighter.  I felt less like a trespasser and more like a steward.  My countenance had brightened.  I felt joy and peace.  The drive home was filled with excited talking and dreaming and wonder.  I was filled with gratitude and completely in awe that God had chosen to speak to us so clearly about so many things.

I began to trust God more than I feared disappointment.  It was a big shifting point for me.

The following evening, we went to a meeting at our church.  We'd recently introduced covenant membership at our church, meaning that you choose to link arm-in-arm with the other believers in the church body and you identify yourself with them, through the good or the bad.  You 'sign on the dotted line', if you will, and become accountable to the leaders and the people.  You commit.

The class went along normally and at the end, our pastor told us we were going to take communion and end in prayer.  Chris and I filled out the form to commit to Bridgeway Church, and we went to take communion.  As soon as we got back to our seats, with the piece of bread for communion in our hands, the strangest thing happened.  What I thought was just an ordinary class suddenly became so much more.  As I took communion, I was suddenly and completely overwhelmed with gratitude and joy.  After all of those months of crying out to God to lead us to where we should go, He had lead us here!  We got to stay and be a part of this community that had become like a family to us over the past six years, and we got to commit to this place we that we loved so dearly... the place that we had so dreaded the thought of leaving.

It was like the floodgates opened up and all of the hope that I'd been holding back bursted through.  In that moment, I just knew that the house was going to be a gift from Him, and I allowed myself to truly THANK God for it for the first time.  I could not stop weeping.  When I looked over at Chris, he was weeping too.  It was a completely unexpected moment.  We must have looked like crazies sitting there in a membership class, weeping with joy and thankfulness over our class notes and information packets.

God had come through and answered our prayers.  He had been faithful to lead us.

He is a trustworthy Father!



There were definitely more hiccups and bumps to come, but what I didn't realize was that God had already given Chris a dream that would carry us through them in confident assurance.  The specifics of the dream were so incredibly spot on to what actually ended up happening, that I will forever and always come back to it in times when my faith is lacking.

And, oh! I hope and pray that it will be a help to you all in those times of trial as well.

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Thank you all for your continued support as I write out this story!  I am grateful for each one of your comments and emails.  xoxoxoxo

sunnie brook's beauty blog - article #2!

My second article- 'five postpartum fashion tips' is up over on sunnie brook's beauty blog today!  Click on over and let me know what you think of my five tips... and please feel free to add any tips of your own in the comments section as well!

xoxoxo

In Hope of a New Day: Chapter Eight

'The One Where We all Cry like Babies'

We went to see the house and fell completely in love. It was everything we had wanted but had not been able to articulate. It was bigger than our current 1100 square foot house, but not excessively so. It was on two and a half acres, and we felt like we could breathe. There was a big barn (already partially built out) that would make an amazing recording studio/workshop for all of Chris' projects. It was way out in the country, but you could get back into town in 10 minutes flat.  The school system was one of the best and most sought-after in the state.

And the sky. Oh, the sky! It was big and bold over our heads and at night it sparkled with a ga-jillion stars. I'd forgotten there were that many! There were horses on both sides of us and four bedrooms and a fireplace. There was even a fire pit out back for sing-a-longs and marshmallows.

There was room for a garden and chickens and goats.

There was room for my family to thrive.



































It had only been on the market for two days, and we knew it wouldn't last long. Yet, we were still a bit hesitant because... well... this was the very first house we had even gone to look at! Shouldn't we, I don't know, look around a bit more before we dove right in??

Nah.

Sometimes you just know about these things... sort of like how I just knew about a certain tall, lanky, bleached blond 18 year-old drummer named Christopher Clark back in high school. Sometimes, you just have to let your heart get a little reckless... break a rule or two.

Besides, I'd been looking around online for long enough to know that this was something special.

The next day, we took the $500 gift we'd received and we put an offer on that house. It was an offer that would work for us while leaving us some extra cash to put back into the house for some updates. We wanted to re-do some of the floors and update the bathrooms and put in a storm shelter. <---(PRIORITY ONE.) A few days later, the owners countered the offer we made, asking us to pay $4000 more than we'd initially offered.

Looking back now, it seems silly that those $4000 caused such tumult in our hearts, but we really didn't want to pay more than we felt we should. The decision now came down to buying the house, knowing that we couldn't fix up some of the things that we would want to right away, or walking away and praying that something else would sweep us off of our feet like this house had done.

We went back and forth and back and forth and back and forth for a couple of days. An extra $4000 out of our pockets would probably mean no storm shelter right away. If we did buy the house, we'd end up moving in right smack-dab in the middle of tornado season, and we'd lived in Oklahoma long enough to know that a storm shelter was not optional for our family. It was an absolute must.

We prayed that God would help us make a decision. We wanted the house so badly, but we wanted to be wise too.

It had been a week since we'd first seen the house, and our already frazzled wits were about to snap with the weight of this final decision. At this point, we had been seeking an answer from God about where to make our home for about eight months, and this felt like it could potentially be the final hurdle in the race. If we decided to accept the counter offer, we would be committing to staying here in Oklahoma. We would be making a huge choice for our family, our three growing boys. Should we do it? Should we not? Were we missing it? Or were we right where we were meant to be?

Ahhhhhh!

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Friday, February 17th was the day we took a leap of faith over that last hurdle, and it was also the day that God poured out so much confirmation and blessing on us that we could hardly stand up underneath it all.

That morning, Chris had planned to go straight to work, but on his way there, Cameron called him. Cameron told Chris about an amazing thing that had happened to him the day before. God had basically told Cameron through a prophetic word that all of the stuff that had gotten stolen from him would be restored, even though it had been missing for two whole months. That very same day, he had every last bit of his gear returned to him by the local police, who had caught the guy who stole it all. As Cam was telling Chris this story, Chris happened to be driving right by our church. Chris was so excited about what God had done for Cameron, that he pulled off the road into the church parking lot so he could hoot & holler and finish the rest of the phone conversation.

After he got off the phone, he felt like God was asking him to go inside the church sanctuary and pray. He hopped out of his truck and went inside. As he was praying, he felt like God was telling him that he should not stress so much about the numbers. It was less about how much was needed here or there, and more about trusting that God would provide for us and wanted to bless us with this house. He was asking Chris to lift his eyes up.

As Chris was walking out of the sanctuary, he ran into his best buddy Joel. He wanted to fill Joel in on all that was happening, so they went to grab a bite to eat. Chris told Joel about the house and the $500 that had been given to us. He also started to tell Joel about the dreams that I had had- including the one about all of the college kids filling up our new house.

As Chris started telling Joel about my dream, Joel's eyes filled with tears. He said that for the last few weeks, he and the youth pastor, Andy, had been praying about and scheming up ways to try and get Chris to be the college worship pastor for the brand new college group that they were going to start up at Bridgeway in the Fall. They hadn't wanted to approach Chris with the idea yet, though, because they knew that he and I were considering leaving the state, and they hadn't wanted to put any kind of weird pressure on us if we felt God calling us elsewhere.

This was all just so... crazy. And really, a dream come true for my musically talented and pastorally-hearted husband. Chris was crying. Joel was crying. And then Joel asked Chris what the HECK he was waiting for on this house. haha.

Chris called me and filled me in quickly on everything that had happened that morning, and told me he was feeling like we should go for it on the house. I agreed. Then Chris texted the real estate agent and told her we wanted to accept the counter offer.

Joel and Chris were clinking glasses and celebrating just as my mom called me at the house. She said that she and my dad had been talking, and they had decided that they would like to give us $5000 toward the house, as a gift.

Say what?!?!

Literally SECONDS after we accepted the offer on the house, after feeling like God said we should move forward in faith and He would provide, we were being given more than enough to cover the difference we'd been wrestling with...more than enough to install the storm shelter that we needed.

Now I was the one who crying. I texted Chris the news.

Basically, to make a long story short, we were all just blubbering like little tiny babies everywhere. hahahaha. Chris told me later he wanted to stand up on the table in that restaurant and just shout to all the people sitting there that there truly is a God and He is is REAL!!!  Our joy was overflowing!  We had never felt God so near.

We were not completely in the clear yet, however.  There were inspections to be done and financing to secure.  I didn't realize it at the time, but one of the most challenging parts of this journey was still up ahead for me... but God had already been orchestrating a way to prove Himself faithful in that yet again.

He had already authored this entire story, in advance.  He does not write our lives out in chapter installments, hoping it will all come together in the end.  He IS the Beginning and the End!  We are wrapped up in His story, and the ending is always good for those who trust Him.

In Hope of a New Day: Chapter Seven

'The Envelope'

One of the major things that this season of unknowns has taught me is that God loves our honest questions.  Have you ever been around a three year old?  I have one living under my roof as we speak, so I have a very tangible example of what it means to "have faith like a child".  My son Myer knows how to ask for what he wants.  (I'm sure many of you are nodding in agreement right now.)  Three year olds know how to ask for what they want.

They start out asking sweetly and within seconds you are sure to be dragged through the entire gamut of their emotions if your answer does not quite line up with their desire.  They have no shame.  They will ask and ask and ask and ask again in any way, shape, or form that they can dream up and then they will go ask their daddy when you're not looking.  Their asking feels like insatiable knocking. (Or maybe water drip torture? haha.)  You can choose to answer the door and give them a straight-forward answer, or you can be slowly driven insane by trying to act like it's not happening.

God asks us to ASK like this, coupled with the faith to believe that the answer He will give us is for our good, even if it doesn't look like what we thought it should look like. (Luke 11:5-13)

When Chris and I were faced with the conflict in our hearts about moving, we started asking God to increase our desires in the direction we should go, and decrease our desires in the way we should not go.  It was like we were constantly hounding God- holding out option A or B in our hands and asking Him to make one bright and make the other dim.  And you know what?

He did exactly that.

If you are standing at a crossroads in life and you have no idea which direction to take, start asking God to increase your desire in the way you're supposed to go, and decrease your desire in the way you should avoid.  Hound Him with the question.  Ask like a man on fire would ask for directions to the nearest pond.  Don't try to hide your passionate desire to know what to do from God.  Lean into Him.  Cry out to Him like a wounded animal!  He can take it!  He loves to answer His children. (Luke 11:11-13)

As Chris and I prayed for our desires to strengthen in the direction where our home was meant to be, it became clear to us both, over a short period of time, where that place was.  We kept checking in with each other over those days and months... asking each other what we were honestly feeling, and we discovered that the most amazing thing was happening.  God was changing both of our hearts toward the same place, in different ways, at the same time.

Oklahoma.

We may have come to the conclusion in different ways, but we both knew that we were not meant to leave this place just yet.  God was so faithful to answer our asking prayers!

For me, one of the ways God started to communicate this to me was through dreams.  I have always prayed that God would speak to me in dreams, and He definitely has two or three times in my life, but it had been quite a while since I had woken up in the middle of the night and just KNOWN that the God of the universe had just authored a story in my sleep.

Late in January, I started having really specific dreams about our situation.  In one dream, Chris and I stumbled upon a house that was for sale within some kind of an enclosed courtyard type area that was attached to the front of our church.  In the dream, we just knew we were meant to buy it and Chris kept saying "We can watch over the church from here!"  When I woke up, I just knew we were meant to commit to this church, and make our home here.

Also, I was finding that day after day, the thought of leaving this city became less and less appealing.  Less... stomachable.  I started to dread the leaving more than I desired it.  My heart was slowly changing.  Even though we were now freed up to be able to just leave and go wherever we wanted, it was becoming the very last thing that I wanted to do.  I did nothing to create this change in myself, it was simply God working in me.

At this point in time, I really started scouring the real estate sites and MLS listings for houses around the Oklahoma City area.  I just knew that it was time to start looking more seriously.  We thought we'd maybe like to move closer to downtown OKC, but nothing was really landing with us in those areas... the homes were all a lot older and needed constant upkeep, the schools were a bit rough, and none of them really screamed "home" to us.  So, we kept looking.  And looking.  And looking.

A few days after the 'church courtyard house' dream, I had another dream.  In this dream, we had bought a big house out in some beautiful country, and all of a sudden it was filled to the brim with college students.  They were there for a conference, and our pastor Sam Storms was speaking, as well as our bestie Joel, and my husband Chris.  I was helping out too in any way that I could. The conference was all about sexual purity, and, in the dream, the college kids were all really affected and encouraged by the three speakers.  I just knew that everyone who was there would never be the same.  The dream ended with me walking out to look at the outside of the house that the conference had taken place in.  On the outside, in big letters, there was a sign that said "NOTEBOOK BOX".

Notebook box? Like the box of notebooks I had pulled out randomly from under the bed at the beginning of all of this craziness?

Could God be saying that those crazy years of heartbreak that Chris and I struggled through as teenagers... those years that I had written about and documented in all of those old journals that were now in a big cardboard box under my bed... would be used somehow to affect and encourage college kids? Could our broken story be used to make others whole? That has been a dream of ours since the day we finally made it to the altar.

It seemed too wonderful to even imagine, all of that pain being turned upside-down into beauty like that.  I stored all of this up in my heart and hoped it would somehow be true.  But... how?

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One Saturday night, shortly after I had that dream, Chris prayed that God would speak something REALLY clear and tangible to us at church the following day.  He prayed that it would be undeniable, and he asked that it would come from someone who didn't even know anything about our situation.  He was asking for a prophetic word.

That next day was Sunday, February 5th.  Chris was leading worship that morning, and after the first service, a woman walked up to him and handed him an envelope.

Chris told me that the second she placed that envelope in his hand, he knew.  He had no idea what was inside of it, but he just knew that this was the thing he had been praying for the night before.  Tears sprang into his eyes.  Jayme, the woman who gave Chris the envelope, said that it was a gift from an anonymous person who just wanted to bless us.  She prayed for Chris and she told him to open it with me when he got home later that day.

When he came home, he told me all about what had happened, and we opened up the envelope.  Inside was an anonymous money order made out to us for the amount of five hundred dollars.

We were shocked and amazed and humbled all at the same time.  We didn't know exactly what the money was meant to be for at the time, but we knew that it was very important... a specific answer from God.

Two days later, I was scanning the MLS listings for the area again, and I clicked on one that had been added earlier that day.  It was unlike anything that we had looked at or even considered before, but I was drawn to it.  As soon as it came up on my computer screen, Chris walked across the room to look at it over my shoulder. I clicked on a couple of the pictures attached to the listing.  Chris straightened up, paused, and said, "I've got chills from head to toe.  We need to go see this place."

Ummm... agreed.  Yes.  No other house that we'd seen online had even sparked enough interest to go look at it.  This was something all together different.  This house made our palms all sweaty. heh.

The next day we called the real estate company that was listing the house.  We set up a time to look at it, and Chris asked about what might be required if we wanted to put an offer on the house, just so we could be prepared.  He wasn't sure if we'd be able to swing it financially at that point in time, because he was thinking that the earnest money we'd be required to put down in order to make an offer would be around the $1200 range.  He thought we were going to have to wait a bit before we could put an offer on anything, because our official closing date on our old house wasn't for another three weeks.  It seemed our hands would be tied financially for a little while longer... but would this house still be there when they weren't??

The agent replied, "Oh, you'll just need $500 in earnest money if you decide that you'd like to put an offer on the house."

Five hundred dollars?!  FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS!?!

The EXACT amount we had been given two days earlier.

We finished making arrangements to go see the house, hung up the phone, and started praying like we'd never prayed before.

NKH Awareness Day!

Today I am wearing black & yellow to help support NKH Awareness Day!

My friend Ryan has two daughters with this disease.  The NKH community needs continual help to fund research so they can keep fighting for a cure!

please visit these links for more info and ways you can help!

nkhcrusaders.com

hopefornkh.org 

nkh-network.org

 The beauties: Lucy Belle and Ellie Kate McLaughlin

sunnie brook's beauty blog!

Yesterday, the first (of three) articles that I wrote for a stylish pregnancy and beyond was featured on sunnie brook's AMAZING beauty blog!

I am so honored to get to be a part of her special May tribute to moms.  She will be posting lots of helpful tips for all you mamas out there, including some videos, so you all should bookmark her site now and keep checking back for all the valuable info this month!

My next two articles will highlight some tips for the postpartum and nursing months, which can be some of the trickiest times for the stylish mama to maneuver through, so be sure to stay tuned!

I guarantee that you will quickly fall head over heels in love with my dear friend Sunnie and her wonderful site... so click on over there and say hello!   :)

xoxoxo

The Verses Project

It is with great JOY that I can direct you to the official launch of 'The Verses Project' website!

Some great friends of ours, along with my husband and I, have been writing music for the past year or so using verses straight from the Bible in order to help us and others memorize the Word of God and store it up in our hearts and minds.

What has resulted is an amazingly beautiful and dynamic collection of songs that have not only encouraged me to know and memorize more scripture, but are constantly being sung from the backseat by my children as well.

It is a breathtaking thing, hearing the Word of God being sung to you by your own children.

This has been such a huge blessing to me, and I hope and pray that it will be to you all as well!!

Each week, a new song will be posted that you can listen to on the site or download for FREE.  You can also sign up for the mailing list and be notified each week when a new song (or two) is posted.  Spread the word and start making some playlists for your home or the car or the gym or WHEREVER!   You will be amazed at how these verses will stick with you and comfort or strengthen you in the moments when you need them most.

Huge thanks to Joel Limpic, Ryan Gikas, my husband Chris Clark, Dustin Ragland, Jamie Cochran, and all the others who have helped organize and contribute to this effort.  Also, a big thanks to Jesse Owen and Kyle Turman for the gorgeous website!

Visit the site here and tell your friends to check it out as well!  :)

In Hope of a New Day: Chapter Six.

'The Shaking'

Okay. So.  I'll try to speed this up a bit, for fear of boring you all to tears.  haha.  I don't think I even realized how much stuff I wanted to write out so that I could remember it all!!!  Thanks for bearing with me.  :)

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At this point in the story, we had sold our house but still had no idea where we were meant to go next.  It was all that we could do to keep functioning in this state of complete unknown.  Chris had a hard time staying motivated in his paint business because... would he even own this company in a few month's time?  How far out should he book painting gigs or DJ gigs?  Up through July?  But what if he started turning down work past that point but then we didn't end up leaving the state?  What then?  Oh, we were frazzled!  But we were still clinging to our faith that God would not let us down.  We KNEW He would come through, and we knew that He would do so at the perfect moment.  He does not delay.  He never shows up late.

So, we waited.

On November 18th, Chris had another significant dream.  (I will forever and ALWAYS believe that God still speaks to us through dreams and visions after all of this, you guys.  Just wait!!)  He had a dream that he and my immediate family were walking through a house.  In the dream, Chris said he just knew it was our new house.  He and my oldest brother, Jared, walked over to inspect the fireplace.  As they peered into the fireplace, they noticed something wasn't quite right.  My brother Jared started telling Chris that the fireplace was inoperable.  He was saying that the fireplace seemed to be made out of material that would just burn up if you tried to light a fire.  Chris said in the dream it looked like the inside of the fireplace was made out of wood or cardboard.  As they were checking things out in there, the rest of my family started freaking out because they looked out the windows of the house (he said there was a big window on one wall in the dream) and they saw a tornado coming right for the house.  In the dream, Chris felt calm, and he knew that the tornado was not going to hit the house.  He kept telling my family that it was okay and that the winds were going to shift, but he led them all down to the tornado shelter so that they would feel more safe.  Then he woke up.

The very same night that Chris had that dream, an out-of-control fire flared up outside of the city of Reno, and my brother Jared's neighborhood was asked to evacuate.  At the last minute, the 80 mph winds driving the fire shifted, and his neighborhood was spared.

We couldn't believe it, because it seemed to have such similarities to the dream Chris had had that very same night... the fireplace and my brother Jared and the winds shifting... But what we didn't realize was that the dream would become even MORE incredibly significant in the months to follow...

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December came and went and we spent Christmas out at my parent's house in Southern Utah.  We had tentatively planned to make a quick trip over to Reno while we were there, just to scope things out, but the trip didn't end up happening due to our time being cut short out there when Chris was asked to go to Atlanta, Georgia to play with the Charlie Hall Band for the 'Passion 2012' conference.

God seemed to be presenting more and more opportunities for Chris to pursue music in Oklahoma, which was very significant.  The timing of it all felt like a door swinging wide open here in OKC, while the doors we'd pushed on out in Reno were gently closing shut.

More than that, it seemed that both of us had an increasing desire to remain in the community that had become so incredibly important to us over the past six and a half years.  The more we weighed our options to leave Oklahoma, the more we began to grieve the thought of leaving our church family here. God seemed to be moving in big ways within our congregation, and He was using dreams and visions with others as well.  A lot of people in the church (including chris) had been having dreams about earthquakes in the sanctuary.  Then, one evening when our pastors were praying for Chris and I for direction and guidance, our pastor's wife physically felt the ground under our feet rolling, like a large earthquake.  None of us felt it, but she said the ground under her was moving like crazy!  We felt like God might be saying we were meant to be a part of what He was doing collectively at Bridgeway Church.  A few days later, Oklahoma was rocked with the largest earthquakes ever recorded here.  I think sometimes God uses the physical to demonstrate what is happening spiritually.... Things were shaking, and we didn't want to miss out on it all!




A couple of weeks after all the shaking, Chris had a dream about three owls sitting on a power line out in our backyard.  In the dream the owls were singing "Hebrews twelve and thirteen" over and over again.  Turns out, in Hebrews 12, the author writes about a "kingdom that cannot be shaken"... reminding us that this earth is temporary, but the things of God are eternal.  Verses 25-29 say:

²⁵ See that you do not refuse him who is speaking. For if they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape if we reject him who warns from heaven. ²⁶ At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.” ²⁷ This phrase, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of things that are shaken—that is, things that have been made—in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. ²⁸ Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, ²⁹ for our God is a consuming fire.

Earthquakes and fires and tornadoes, oh my!

God was up to something big.

 We didn't realize it at the time, but He was beginning to "connect all of the dots".  He had the perfect place already carved out for us.  A place that we couldn't have even come up with in our wildest dreams.  It was there, waiting in the wings, and we had no clue that we were only moments away from stumbling upon it and finally finding our way home.

Team Jackson!

I wanted to take a little break in my chapter series to mention a fundraiser that is happening online now through June 30th to benefit my friend Halle's son, Jackson Whittington.

Sweet little Jackson was born with a bilateral cleft lip and palate, and was later diagnosed with Simpson Golabi Behmel Syndrome. Recently he was also diagnosed with a fever syndrome (PFAPA).

 The medical costs have been steep for Hallé and Daniel, and their insurance won't cover a lot of the routine treatments that Jackson needs in order to stay healthy.

 Hallé has been writing about their experience over at their blog 'Travels with Jackson'.

 Would you consider visiting their fundraiser page for more info, and giving to this precious family in their time of need? They have already raised over $4,000 in one week and are at 27% of their financial goal of $15,000! Any amount is helpful and appreciated!

 Thank you all so much!!! :)

In Hope of a New Day: Chapter Five.

"Home Sweet Home"



At this point in the story, it was early November of 2011. As I was praying and praying about possibly moving back to Reno, I started to discern something inside of my heart that caused me to pause. The more Chris and I talked about Reno and what areas we could look at to live in/move to, the more we butted heads. He was thinking to move closer to the center of town, and I was feeling adamant about moving back out towards the side of town that I grew up in, which is pretty far from the city of Reno itself. I noticed that I would almost start to get angry when Chris wouldn't agree that we should move back out towards where I spent my life as a little girl. I even found myself searching on real estate sites & Zillow.com for my childhood house and the surrounding neighborhoods, and I kept saying to Chris, "I just want to move back to Callahan Ranch!!" (that was the name of my old neighborhood.)

Red flag.

Something wasn't quite right here, and it took a few months before I could even decipher what could possibly be going on in my head.

I started to realize that my restless heart was hungry for more than just something new.

My restless heart was hungry for home.



Now, maybe it is just me, but I have found this to be the most difficult part of growing up and becoming an adult. There comes a point, after the days of reckless youth (when you couldn't wait to flee the nest), when all you want to do is go back. You flap around for a while out on your own until you start to realize that your arms are tired and the worms tasted better in the dirt back home, and you go searching for the nest you once knew.

But you can't go back.

It's not natural or healthy or good for anyone to go backwards- being beak fed your worms and playing video games in your parent's basement until you're suddenly 38 and probably balding. You've got to start building your own nest... you've got to let go of the past... you've got to grow up and start gathering some sticks.

For me, this is when things started to shift. It was almost like the second that I uncovered where my deepest longings were truly coming from, EVERYTHING was back up in the air again. The need to get back out to Reno as soon as possible instantly stopped pounding in my ears and I felt... lost. I knew now that God was unearthing a part of my heart that needed healing, and to be honest, I just didn't know if I had the strength it would take to allow it. I was SO weary at this point from all of the questions and the unknowns and the excitement and the tension. I felt like a weary traveler who had been walking for miles and miles only to realize that I had been doing a complete circle and was standing back on my own welcome mat.

Now what? Now where? If not there... WHERE, Lord?!?!!

I felt a bit angry. I felt a bit hurt. I mean, all I had wanted from the very beginning was to go where God wanted me to go, you know? That was really my desire. I just wanted to BE where He wanted me to BE. Why wasn't He honoring that heart cry of mine?? Why was I right back where I started... full of longing and empty of direction?

What I didn't realize at the time was that I was actually EXACTLY where God wanted me to be. He was so good to show me where I was broken. He was so kind to show me where this longing was coming from before I forced my way back home and then realized once I got there that I was still unsatisfied... still swelled up with longing... because there is more to home than familiar scenery! The sweetest memories of my whole life are from the piece of land my parents raised us on. I used to spend hours on the trampoline looking at the mountains under the stars and I know for a fact that God spoke to me there when I was little and He did it through the beauty of His creation. This whole time I had been longing for that sense of home, and now God was telling me clearly:

"Emery Josephine, I am your home."

Only He can satisfy the deepest longings for home in our hearts. HE is our home. He is our home. HE is our home!! And on this earth, there will always be a longing for home that can not be completely fulfilled on this side of eternity. It's this longing for home that pulls us in to Him. It's this longing that keeps us seeking after Him like children who need their father.

The beauty in all of this is that if we will just run to HIM to satisfy us, despising the things that lie to us and tell us that they can satisfy us instead... a new house, a new car, a new wife, a faster boat, a new social media time suck... then He WILL prove Himself to be enough for us- whether we find ourselves in a dark prison cell or a cookie cutter house buried deep in the jungles of suburbia or on the wind swept plains of Oooooooklahoma! He is our home and He is everywhere.



My heart began to slowly heal. I started believing that God was enough and could satisfy every longing my heart could dream up, just by being Who He Is.

Suddenly, the book of Nehemiah took on a whole new, beautiful light. In the book of Nehemiah, the people rallied together to rebuild the walls of their broken down home town. But the way they did it was breathtaking. Each family was in charge of repairing just the section of the wall that was in front of their own house. Everyone took their own section of the wall, and in 52 DAYS the entire wall around Jerusalem was rebuilt, after it had been in ruins for over 150 years. Isn't that awe inspiring? It was a team effort, led by the heart of a man who had been stirred by God, and the people were faithful to do the work that was set directly in front of them. I started to think of Nehemiah as a picture of the Church, the global Church, caring for the communities they had been planted in, until the city of God was rebuilt and restored. And I started to ask God what my part in that rebuilding would be... what was right in front of me that He might be calling me to.

But the most stunning part of when I started to think back on all the things God had been speaking to us up until that point was the pairing of Nehemiah with JOHN 15. John 15 says:

"ABIDE in me, and I will ABIDE in you." (John 15:4)

The Message translation of this verse says it a little differently:

"Live in me. Make your home in ME, just as I do in you."

And, just like that, even though we had just sold our house and had no idea where we were going to end up or what we would be doing or what life was going to look like, I had never felt more at home.