Verse of the Week
| Our verse this week reminds me how God can even use broken promises for His glory. Settle in and stick with me on this one. The photo above is Tiff and my first house. I can’t help but smile when I see it because of all of the memories we have there. Memories from seasons in our lives when life was much different than today. Times as newlyweds and brand new parents. Times when I naively thought we had really busy lives BEFORE kids… We bought the house in 2009 and, with baby #2 on the way, moved to our current home in 2014. It wasn’t a great market to be selling a house in at that time, and we had a deadline named Mia Rose Finke to work around. When it became clear we were going to lose money if we sold, we decided to rent the property. We became landlords by default. Of the many walk-throughs we offered to potential tenants, one shocked me. A classmate of ours from Salve Regina University was moving to Connecticut. We hadn’t seen her in 7 years until she came walking up our walkway to check out the house. She and her boyfriend promptly put a deposit down and we breathed a big sigh of relief that we’d found a tenant. Unfortunately, the relief was premature. The boyfriend involved starting acting erratic during our discussions. Apparently, he’d had a bad experience with a prior landlord, and was taking it out on us. The deal fell through, and they wanted their deposit back. I have to admit that I let my emotions take me for a ride through the process. I was bothered and super anxious throughout. I felt betrayed. I, I, I, I, feelings, feelings, feelings, emotions, emotions, emotions, me, me, me, me. I was so focused on ME that I forgot it’s not ME who is in control. After parting ways with our former classmate, the tenant we ended up with turned out to be the best possible situation for us. She was a recently divorced mother of two getting back on her feet. We’ve had a wonderful and stable business relationship, and she’s lived in the house for the past 7 years! Now she is getting remarried and moving into a larger home with her new combined family. We are selling the house, and guess what happened? Our first buyer, after putting a deposit down and having us turn away other suitors, has backed out of the deal. You know what’s not in control? My emotions! Nope. I haven’t lost a wink of sleep because I know that God is in control. Tiff and I know that the first deal didn’t happen for a reason. So I’m challenging you today. When something happens that seems to be bad in your life, change the question. Don’t ask, “why me?” and have a pity party. Instead, talk to God and ask, “what do you want me to learn from this?” God will take you out of your comfort zone in order to develop you into the person He created you to be. Remember: suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope. |