Home Is Where The Heart Is

After trying the Unitarian church and the Unity church, I was at a loss as to where I could go next to feed my spiritual needs. In the meantime my second son had made a friend in our new neighborhood who happen to be Christian. The boy invited my two oldest sons to go to his church youth group with him one week. I thought it would be a good way for them to make some new friends, so I said yes. I was a bit apprehensive, because I didn’t want them catching any lies from the church. When they came home I asked them what they talked about and then made sure to set them straight on the truth so they would understand that the Christians were completely misled.

I of course, knew the truth, and I felt secure in letting my boys continue to go to the youth group because they knew the Christians were wrong. One evening my second son came home with a Bible and was reading it. I wasn’t really sure what to think about that. It made me very uncomfortable. I opened it up to the first page and started to read it. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” What!? I read a little more, skimmed a little and put it down. That would just not do. Of course that was a huge lie. Evolution is how the earth came to be – everybody knows that. Silly Christians.

I immediately mocked the words in the Bible so that my son could see that it was just that ridiculous. And because we were homeschooling I started a science course on evolution, just to make sure they got all the facts straight. That way no matter what they would know right from wrong.

That same year my husband and I decided to try to buy another house. It had been three years since we lost our other home and we longed to have stability in our lives. We had moved year after year and it was so exhausting. Our credit was shot though, after losing a house, a car and not being able to pay our bills on time. So we took the next nine months diligently cleaning up our credit trying to get it just high enough to qualify for a FHA loan. Somehow we were able to get our credit to where it needed to be and the loan officer we were working with told us we were golden and to go out and start looking for a house.

We were on top of the world. Never in our wildest dreams did we think we were going to bounce back from our horrible failures of the past few years. Owning a home was like a miracle and we started looking for houses immediately. We looked at several homes, but none were quite right. Some were to small, some needed too much work, some weren’t on a quiet street. Until we found the one. It was the perfect size, it needed no work, and it was in a quiet neighborhood in a good part of town. We loved it! We let our realtor know we wanted it and got excited to have a real home for our family.

That is until our lender told us that, by the way, our credit was not where it needed to be to get this FHA loan we wanted. Huh?! Shocker to us – we didn’t even understand what was going on! But it was fine, she said, because she was we could just talk to the man selling the house and ask him to wait one more month. In one more month our credit would have more time to bounce back after paying off our debts and having bad credit removed. I never in a million years thought that anyone in their right mind would just hold a house for someone for a month. I certainly would not of. I knew we were going to lose this home and my mind went reeling. Where all my dreams about to die?

I felt like I had been wandering my whole life. I had literally moved every year to year and a half for over ten years. I was bone weary from life and didn’t know how much more beating up I could take. Home is a special place where you know you have security, comfort, family. It is full of love and life and tradition. It was so important for us to give this to our children. To not make them feel like nomads anyone, but to put down roots. My heart was breaking at the thought.

How I wish I would have something more to ground me during this bleak time in my life. Some hope or faith to keep me going from day-to-day, to know that things were going to be OK, that we were going to be taken care of. Instead I was a horrible mess and I let everyone know it. If only I had something to hold on to in a world that was constantly tossing me this way and that. But I didn’t. I had nothing and I felt completely alone. I had no control over my life and nothing to even look forward too.

That is why I am so thankful today for Jesus. So many times I have had problems and now I have my Rock. He comforts me and gives me strength in times of need. I never worry if we have money problems, because I know my God is taking care of me. I no longer live in quicksand, but have anchored myself to solid ground. And because of this I have hope, and I have faith. I don’t let worry and fear swallow me whole, but instead I turn them over to the One that saves and let him help me battle these things. And I have to say, it makes life so much better. So much easier to handle. Security, comfort, family. Home.