I haven’t blooged in awhile… I love to write, but it is the
first thing that I tend to “push to the side” when life continues to get so
busy.
I want this blog, “Life as a Wife & Mama” to be a place
of encouragement, along with documenting the ways the Lord is working in our
lives. I would be NO where without my relationship with Jesus Christ, our Lord.
He truly is the giver of all good gifts. In the Bible it specifically says…
“Delight yourself in the Lord and he WILL give you the desires of your heart.”
(Proverbs 37:4)
We have a new house.
It is completely, 100%, a blessing from Jesus.
(and a HUGE thanks to my
dad-in-law, Mark who is a relator and AMAZING!!!)
Here is how the story goes…
It starts with sharing about a HUGE change for us that took
place this past September. We had been going to an awesome church for the first
3 years of our marriage. We were entering year 4 and we felt like a change was
going to be coming. Praying through it, I asked that God would give both Josh
and I the same feeling about needing to find a new “church home”. For Josh,
this was a very large deal as the church we were attending is the ONLY church
Josh ever knew. An awesome body of Christ… We love this church! Josh had the same word from the Lord at the same time.
The reason we felt like it was time to “transition” was purely
a step of faith for US as a family. It wasn’t for any other reason except that
it was time to find a church home that was a place where we could grow and
expand as Josh and Ria Thurston+ Jude. We wanted a place to grow in our
gifting’s in a new way and trusted that God was up to something…
He was! We visited North Star Community Church the 2nd
week we were “church shopping”. It couldn’t have been clearer that this was our
new home. There were several too-crazy-to-be-coincidences during the sermon
& before and after service. It was totally Jesus making it clear to us.
Amazing! We have loved getting to know a new church family and finding our way
there as well as being on leadership with our Pastors John & Shannon. They
are awesome mentors to us!
Fast Forward…. Selling our house end of March, 2013…
Waiting for Josh’s contract for school for next year
(Charter schools do their budgeting/next year contracting very differently… and
they come at the end of May/early June). This put a little wrinkle in our
getting approved for a loan. We were
fully approved just pending that little piece of paper…
Fast Forward again… Last Friday, May 17th…
Our Pastors hosted a “Thank You” volunteer dinner (which was
AMAZING!!). Pastor John was talking about North Star and our presence in the
community of Coon Rapids. We love being a part of this church for MANY reasons…
but one is that they continually ADD VALUE into peoples lives, especially in
Coon Rapids where they truly felt like God has called them.
In house searching, we mentioned Coon Rapids a couple times…
but never really were like “YES, let’s look at Coon Rapids for our future home…”
UNTIL after the Volunteer Dinner on Friday evening… and we just so happened to
be going and looking at houses the next day, May 18th.
That night when we got in the car, we were both on the same
EXACT page that we needed to look at MORE homes in Coon Rapids. We felt pretty
confident that we wanted to be IN the community and grow in our place of faith
being a part of North Star.
Fast Forward one more time…. April 18th… Saturday
Morning…
“THE HOUSE” came back on the market. That morning. Saturday,
May 18th. It was sold once before, but due to financing… it fell thru.
“THE HOUSE” was incredible. We saw the photos online and were eagerly waiting
until 1:00 p.m. when we were able to go see it.
When we drove up, we both just KNEW that this house would be
a complete GIFT if we were able to have it as our own.
The backyard, the inside, the kitchen, the possibilities of
entertaining (which is one of my favorite things to do), the fact that they had
an office and also owned their own business, the amenities, the fire pit, the
two decks, the playground for Jude, a beautiful fireplace…. the list went on
and on. It was a home like nothing we had seen in our price range and we surely
couldn’t build anything like it (we had debated about building….). The lot
alone was like 3x the size of any we could get in building.
Mark, my dad-in-law told us this wouldn’t be on the market
long. This was only on for ONE day. We just knew it was something we wanted to
pursue…(Especially, after the incredible confirmation on Friday Night, then it
coming back on Saturday Morning and us seeing it on Saturday afternoon....)
We had to act fast. It’s a sellers market, and it wasn’t
going to be on for longer than a couple days. The story of the counter-offering
+ our offer + Josh not having his contract yet…. Is another miracle! Thank you
to Mark for his wisdom in the real estate market… wow!
The happy ending is that God said YES as we prayed our
hearts out for that family… the house…
our future… We truly want the current owners of the home to also be blessed In
this process.
We found out on Monday, May 20th that we in fact
GOT THE HOUSE. The house we truly feel like is a gift handed to us from
Jesus…..
Of course we still have a mortgage.
Of course we still have to budget wisely.
No, we didn’t like get the house for FREE or something…. Ha…(wouldn't that be nice!!)
With all that being said… this house WILL advance his
kingdom work. This house is his house
and we are entrusted to use it for his glory. I really feel strongly about that
as does Josh. Our biggest desire is to be an OPEN home where people feel
comfortable and where we can host and have fun and grow as a family.
Jude loves, loves, loves the backyard! He is going to have
some good trees to climb, a cul-de-sac to learn to ride his bike on & plenty
of space to play with toys.
We feel VERY, VERY blessed to call this house home this
June.
It was a deep desire of my house to have a home where we
could host people and use my gift of hospitality.
I truly thank Jesus for his gift to us & I really feel
like it is one of the many rewards of STEPPING out in faith when honestly it
felt so uncomfortable to “switch churches”. It was not something I saw coming,
but because it was something God was calling us too… we couldn’t delay.
Obedience is huge. Obedience in this case was NOT easy.
Obedience brings rewards.
I pray this story encourages you… many people have been
asking me for it so I thought I would blog it. Also, I want to document the
blessing of the Lord and be able to give God ALL the credit!
Blessings to you today!!!
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