There was once a time that I thought I would choose to hide the truth of where we would be living while we saved for our first home. I didn’t love the idea of not sharing that we would be living with my dad, but I thought it was necessary… because I was scared of what would happen if I did. What would my clients think of me? The people I work for are AMAZING and such inspiring human beings. They’re all living such wonderful lives, building incredible careers, creating cozy homes that look so welcoming and like spaces their family and friends love spending time in… so what would they think of me when they found out that I was running my business from my dad’s basement?
Right before we moved out of our apartment and into my dad’s house (back “home” for me), a friend told me I didn’t have to tell anyone. She took my hand, looked me in the eye, and said, “You don’t have to share this with the world if you don’t want to.” It was comforting to know I had the option. That no one was expecting me to share this personal part of our lives. Yet after years of being so open and honest about even the most private pieces of our life and our relationship… I wasn’t sure I should stop now. So I gave away the truth, piece by little piece. I can’t remember when I finally came out and said in one sentence that we were living with my dad… it might have been months after we moved in. But it was something that just naturally came up in real life conversation so often that I thought, “Why have I still not openly shared this with the world?”
I’m kind of feeling the same way now about our house. The house that doesn’t exist in our reality quite yet. It could be down the street, it could be in a neighboring county, or it could be in another state… we don’t know where it is or what it looks like. We just know it exists in the future somewhere. Yet we still have to answer the question everyone asks when they see us is: “So when are you moving?”
Writing this post is nerve-wracking because this topic is a weird one for me to talk about, sending my words out into the void of the internet, unsure exactly WHO will be reading these paragraphs. I will literally never know who will read this post. Maybe it’s someone who cares deeply about me. Maybe it’s someone who hates me and wants to see me fail. But I can’t think about it like that because then I would stop sharing the best parts of our lives… yes, even the seasons of unknown.
I think we have the most life-changing revelations when we are in a place where we aren’t sure what the future looks like. In a season of waiting, we are left with a lot more time to think. There are fewer distractions, fewer hours, and less energy spent on whatever it is you are waiting for. Forced to turn our gaze from what’s ahead to what’s inside of us, to look at what’s currently around us instead of what is being stored up for us, we are brought into the present, grounded in the here and now in a way that makes it hard not to pay attention to the very small, very beautiful things in our every day.
If you had told me when we were engaged that we would be living at my dad’s for over a year shortly after we got married… I would have been MORTIFIED. Indeed, that was one of the first emotions I felt when we moved in here. Utter humiliation. The thoughts in my head went something like this:
“Wow, 23 years old and living in your dad’s basement… how admirable.”
“You’ve really built up quite a life for yourself, haven’t you?”
“Look how successful you are… living under your dad’s roof.”
“Everyone is going to lose so much respect for you.”
“Six figure business, yet living in a basement… why do you even try?”
“What’s the point of working so hard if this is where it has gotten you?”
“People think you have no money, so they don’t care to listen to you. Don’t even try.”
“You are such a disgrace.”
These are the things I was saying to MYSELF. Isn’t that horrible? I think if we’re honest, we all have that voice in our heads that is 100% unhelpful because it is just cruel. Who would ever talk to us like that in real life?! No one, I would hope… but obviously, these thoughts are sadly similar to the thoughts some people tend to like a hateful little garden in their heads that never sees the light of day but shape their opinions of everyone all the same. There is at least some truth to those statements above in some people’s minds… and yet after a year of living here with my dad, I have seen so much of what they never can. So much beauty and sweetness and the simplest joys of life that we would have completely missed out on had we not chosen to live here when the Lord made it clear that was something He wanted us to do.
I now see our time here as something we were BLESSED to be able to do. That’s what my closest friends told me this time would be at the very beginning, but I didn’t believe them deeply enough to let it conquer the cruel and condescending voice of my inner critic. I wish I would have believed them because it would have spared me a lot of heartache and worry over what people were thinking of me and how “well” I was doing in life, if I was meeting the standard. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. Because this is OUR life. Our own beautiful life that’s unlike any other. It not only has a million puzzle pieces that no one else has, but it has those pieces shaped and molded and woven together in such a way that no one else will ever get to experience, either. I think that’s something to celebrate and be thankful for.
No one’s opinion of me matters because this life is fully my own and no one else can have it. No one else can experience what it’s like to sit on the couch next to my dad and yell at the TV together as the Survivor contestants race through an immunity challenge course. They’ll never know what it’s like to walk downstairs and find a chocolate bunny or an Everything bagel from Wegman’s with a sticky note with my name on it and a smiley face in my dad’s handwriting. No one else will have tears streaming down their cheeks from laughing so hard as they watch Disney mascot fail videos on Youtube with their “little” sister. (She just turned 21 this past Saturday, but I will forever call her little!) Seeing my husband and my sister become good friends and have inside jokes together and make each other cocktails and watch shows together… it’s indescribably wonderful and it all feels like SUCH a gift. A gift made and intended just for us. Justin’s known that from the beginning… and I need to be more like him with how he trusts and knows everything is right where God intends it to be.
These moments are so precious to me and I just want to cry when I think about what I would have missed out on had we not followed the Lord’s guidance here. We could have kept living in our apartment for $2,100 a month… we could have totally ignored and not followed the financial wisdom that was put on our minds and hearts before we got married… we could have just gone and done what WE wanted to do because this is OUR marriage and time is short and we need to start living and building our OWN life immediately and at ANY cost. That’s what the voice in my head was saying, anyway.
We would have missed out on such a beautiful gift the Lord had for us here in the form of this season had I not quieted that voice and centered my spirit on HIS. Oh, has it required sacrifice… the laying down of my own dreams and desires, the Pinterest home decor boards now covered in virtual cobwebs, the boxes of our kitchen things literally collecting dust in the storage room. This season of following God has literally required us to put all of those things of ours away and let Him give us new hopes, dreams, and desires instead. To just be.
To wait.
To listen.
To learn.
To lean.
To trust.
There’s a quote in one of my favorite, FAVORITE shows (called THE OA – it’s on Netflix and if you haven’t watched it with a pen and a notebook on your lap, you’re doing it wrong). There is this part where the main character is talking about trying to make sense of what she had seen in a near death experience, and her friend asks her what, exactly, the “dazzling dark” place she described she was in is called… and this is her response:
“Why do we always try to understand? The future is dark. Not dark, like, bad. Just dark. You can’t see it. And maybe living is just bringing light to what you need in a day.”
I feel like that’s us in this season. That’s all of us in ANY season where we have even the tiniest bit of needing to rely on a power outside of ourselves to get us through. Some people get that light in their day through knowledge, through entertainment, through alcohol, through food, through friends. We all get that light for the day through something.
I feel like the Lord has had us in that “dark place” of not having a clue what the future looks like so that we can fully rely on Him to be the light that gives just enough to show us where we are walking step by step. We can’t see where the road leads ahead. What we can see is just enough to keep us on the path.
So when people ask us, “When are you moving?” or, “Are you building a home?!” or, “Where are you going to live?” our answer is, “We don’t know yet.” And we’re okay with that. As we take little steps that are just starting to get us warmed up to the idea of house shopping, I am so grateful for where we are now. So grateful. I almost don’t want to leave! Isn’t it crazy what the Lord has done? How He has changed my heart and given me new eyes to see what He had here for us? What a gift that this season of unknown has been. Our life has looked totally different from what we thought it would be, yet so perfect all at the same time. When I shared about our house hunting process beginning at Bible study yesterday, similar words came out of my mouth:
“Well, I’m just very expectant of the Lord and what He is going to do here, because we’re going into this totally blind. We have no idea where we’re going to end up, what it’s going to look like. Where it’s going to be. We have no clue. We’re just letting him lead. All I have is the vision he’s given me of a warm and welcoming space, a place where we can break bread with our friends and have communion and make memories and offer a place of peace and comfort for people who need it. That’s all I have! However He leads us to that, I know it’s going to be totally different and totally perfect compared to anything I could have imagined or dreamed up myself.”
