Sometimes Life is Like Falling Leaves!

I sit every morning upstairs peering out my window onto the beautiful tree with green leaves. I am up high and it feels like I am a little kid in my tree house. I sip my coffee, read and drink in the morning slowly.  (Usually I get interrupted by small children needing breakfast or something of the sort.)  But there is an indescribable peace that takes place each morning.  This is new for me.  This peace.  It feels safe, warm, comfortable.  It feels like I am home.

our 1960's trailer

 I haven't felt that way in a long time.  I was married and away from home at age 18.  I spent every 2 years moving from place to place being a military wife.  Our last stop was our longest place of residence.  We were there for 5 years.  During our time there, my husband worked insane hours, morning, nights, weekends, holidays.  It was not the normal to eat dinner together every night by 5pm.  The typical 9 to 5 job was never a part of our lives.  My husband commuted almost 2 hours one way to work, so we decided to try a buy a house elsewhere.  We put 29 offers in on homes. None were accepted.  So we went to plan B...buy a teal blue and white striped 1960's trailer and live there part time, closer to his job to save on his crazy commute and long hours.  Luckily I home-school, so I trucked all the kids with me to see daddy at the trailer as often as possible.  Our lives consisted of living in  2 homes, (none of which felt like home). The trailer felt like a fun get away by the beach!  The other house felt like the place we go when daddy was on the night shift.  After a year and a half of living between 2 places, we started the process of buying a home closer to my hubby's work again. The trailer and home thing was becoming to difficult.  It was taking it's toll on our family.  It was stealing our family time and robbing us of living a peaceful life together.  The kids needed to see their daddy more and I was desperately needing to spend time with my husband and have some type of "normal routine". We started the home buying process over again!  The first house we saw...we loved... it felt like it was made just for us!  It had HOME SWEET HOME written all over it!  It was the perfect combination of my other half and myself!  It had LAND!  It had fruit trees!  It had a swing hanging from an enormous pepper tree!   It had chicken cages and a bunny rabbit.  It had dirt and space to ride bikes!  It had giant, breath-taking trees with birds singing constantly!  It had a view of the city!  It was a hidden gem waiting for the right family to find it.  It had four bedrooms downstairs and the master bedroom upstairs.  (Perfect for my husband's night shift, so he could sleep during the day!)  It was a match made in heaven.  But it wasn't that we wanted bigger or better or more...we just wanted to be a family again!  This home represented a lifestyle makeover!  It meant waking up to my man every morning!  It meant no more fast food and long car rides to the trailer.  It meant going to one church and growing roots! This home meant freedom!  It meant living under one roof and living the way God intended families to live...TOGETHER! This home sat on the market for over 500 days...escrow after escrow fell through with this home.  We found it only 35 days before it was to be auctioned off!  Our realtor said she couldn't believe it was still sitting here and not snatched up already!  She said, "It was as if Someone upstairs was keeping hidden and saved for just your guys!"  And she was right about that!

I am unsure of how to tell you how GOOD of a God we serve, without going into all the details of our nightmare short sale process!  I have always heard that we grow through trails.  That we are "old being refined by the fire".  That we are the "clay and HE is potter".  That what "doesn't kill us, makes us stronger".  Now I am a believer!  After the intense drama and disappointment after disappointment...I am a believer!  I look back at this home buying process and see the hand of God in EVERY detail!  I see that He allowed us to be declined 29 times on buying a home before we found this one.  I see that God hand picked our renters for both the trailer and the other home.  I see how He brought certain people into our lives to prove his power!  I see how all the "mistakes"  were in fact not "mistakes" at all... but God's protection and plan for us!



my tree after the fallen leaves and before the purple flowers!



The upstairs lounge area where I sit in my make believe tree house has more of a story to it.  For the first 4 weeks of living in our new home, I noticed the pretty green leaves started falling off more and more!  Each morning I would grieve that my tree was dying!  I started panicking!  I watered that tree religiously out of fear of losing my tree house and peaceful mornings with my coffee, prayer  time with God and room with a view!  I would say, "Why God?...You know this is my most precious sacred place in the house.  Why would you take that from me?  I love this tree.  Don't let it die, let it live, let it thrive!"  And after all the leaves had fallen and nothing but sticks were left...I noticed something strange...A delicate, bright purple flower on the end  of one of the limbs.  The next morning..another flower and the next many flowers!!!!  After 6 weeks of a tree resembling death....it came to life!!!!  And it was thriving!  The green leaves were nothing compared to the purple flowers!



our wonderul backyard



I realized one of the most important life lessons this week.  All those struggles of living between 2 places, driving back and fourth, lost time with my husband and the stresses of married life with four small children represented the "green leaves."  God allowed our family of time of "slow death"... a falling of "green leaves" in order to bring the vibrate, majestic flowers!   When I felt like God was absent or slow in His dealings with our short sale and living situations was indeed God's Plan A the entire time.  HE was proving Himself to be a loving, nurturing God who has our desires in His heart too!  I thank God for the falling leaves and now I praises Him for the purple flowers.  I hope to not doubt again!  My faith has been strengthened in a way never known to me before.  I see that my Maker is always working ALL things together for His good!  (Romans 8:28)