Remember
Look Back
When the journey seems long and you feel you’re hardly making progress… look back.
Maybe it is your
marriage,
spiritual growth,
paying off debt,
pregnancy,
parenting a child who is a challenge,
health & fitness,
starting a business or
building a house.
It is not “nothing” or a failure if you can see how far you’ve come.
See How Far You’ve Come
Four years ago this month, we let go of this house dream. We had been questioning it for some time; a starter house in town would be less expensive, a LOT less work and we could live in it sooner. We put in offers on 6-10 different places that year.
And then it came up. The DREAM place. A foreclosure, in the country, large house needing only cosmetic updates, had an outbuilding, and several acres. It seemed perfect! It could be ours right then, and financially it was even within reach (barely!).
It was beautiful. Let me tell you, imagination can build dreams fast! There was open space for a garden, a clean, quaint barn perfect for a home photography studio, an above ground fenced pool off the back patio for idyllic summer days, and plenty of bedrooms and square footage for future children and guests! Though a little farther away from town and not the house we had been working on, it was too good to pass up. It just made sense.
Or so it seemed.
But it was not to be. We were the second to put in an offer, merely hours after the first. Ours was the higher offer and the bank accepted the lower one!
We were confused. Disappointed. For one reason or another, all the houses we tried to buy that year fell through. We joke that God closed all the doors to home ownership for us except the hardest and longest one.
But here we are, years later, enjoying our little home of our own. Not the way we pictured the story to play out (hahahahaha!!!!), but beautiful nonetheless because we see God’s hand in writing it.
Last week I read this quote and it resonated with me:
It used to disappoint me, that life couldn’t be simpler. But I’ve learned to embrace it. To do more than embrace it. To love that life is that way. That the crazy ride is what life actually is, when it is at its best.
[If it went smoothly] it wouldn’t have been much of a story. Not a great story anyway.
Stories are always better when they are filled with conflict and your character is tested. When your character’s character is tested. Looking back at all the movies I love or stories that I’ve heard that moved me . . . none of them are simple journeys where someone wants something and then get what they wanted. They are stories filled with drama and heart- break. With joy and suffering and lots and lots of time spent overcoming obstacles. Someone wants something but they can’t seem to get it. And so they go in a different direction. And that leads to something they didn’t expect. They think they are lost. And they are. Until they realize that the wrong path has led them to the place they were trying to get to in the first place. And on, and on. It isn’t simple, but it’s gripping, with a hint of the kind of mystery in a Stephen King story and the magical romance of a Nicholas Sparks novel, all rolled into one.
–Rory Feek, This Life I Live blog
Engaged 7 years ago this Valentine’s day! <3
We took our engagement photos in front of our little dream house, luckily with the outside looking a million times better than the interior! If only we knew then what a journey we were embarking on! Maybe sometimes it’s better not to know… because I wonder, would we have done it?
Seven years full of joy and loss, challenges, life lessons, and attempting to buy different houses thinking maybe this one wasn’t for us.
But it was.
In God’s crazy wild story of our lives.
One year ago the drywall got finished {baby #3 had not arrived yet}. When I think about how far we’ve come in just the year since then, it seems easier to see the progress. One year ago there were no outlets, lights or paint.
EASIER to see progress can still seem like not very much.
But take a moment to think all the way back to the beginning of your journey and be encouraged by how far you’ve come! YOU CAN DO THIS. Stay the course. Run to win the prize. Watch some Winter Olympics and be reminded of how many years (and years and years!) those athletes have worked towards their dreams. DON’T GIVE UP! Tell me in the comments what YOUR journey has been, and where you’re at making progress towards your goal. 🙂
{Honey, remember when we were sleeping on this floor? Well, before the floor, on an air mattress on the subfloor underneath it? That was just 2 months ago, in December 2017 by the Christmas tree — look at the living room now! :D}
And they lived happily…
…on the journey…
…the life God gave them…
…an adventure to be continued!
P.S. To read the beginning of the House Series and see more “before” pictures of the dilapidated shell we now live in {slightly transformed ;)}, you can read about A Dying Farmhouse.
