Celebrating a Different Kind of Anniversary

Yesterday was an anniversary in our life, but not your typical one.  We were celebrating 18 years since God told us to move.  What?  Like I said, not your typical anniversary and the only reason I remember the date so clearly is because I journalled about it right away.  I knew it was a date I wanted to remember and the way everything unfolded that day I knew I couldn't forget.

We had been living like nice, normal, decent people in a nice, normal, neighbourhood - or so we thought.  We had moved in expecting our first baby and within 3 years were expecting our third.  It was a more mature neighbourhood so there weren't any young families except us.   The people living on either side of us had older children.  We had developed a relationship with most of the people in the area and they were all friendly.  The people living directly behind us had no children and though I tried to reach out to them, they were not interested in reaching back. 

Soon the parties started.  These people all knew each other, turns out.  They'd lived on the street for years.  These were not small parties.  They were big parties.  "Call the cops" kind of parties.  We had young children sleeping.  It was no fun for us.  We were invited to the first one, but they got the idea this wasn't our kind of thing so stopped inviting us and instead starting telling us when the parties were happening so that we could make arrangements to leave town!  Yikes.

When we bought the house we were a little overextended, but we had a plan.  We were going to rent out the basement and the one half of the house.  It was a good sized house and we didn't use those two spaces anyway.  We easily found tenants and all seemed good.  The problem was the neighbour behind us didn't like it.  I guess he figured we were bringing down the neighbourhood.  He started to make it clear he wasn't thrilled with us and looking back, I think he was trying to make us so miserable that we would want to move.  Well, it worked.

He started turning his dogs loose.  They would come into my backyard when I was out playing with the kids.  I hated that.  He would turn up his awful music whenever I was there as well.  He hated the sound of kids playing and I hated his choice of music.  I would look directly at him and he would completely ignore me.  I would kindly say, "Is there anything we've done to make you upset?"  He wouldn't answer me.  I finally asked his partner if there was anything we'd done, but she feigned ignorance.

One day the music seemed just a little louder than normal.  A little raunchier than normal.  Again, fully ignoring me.  RM was home, so I said to him, "We have to say something to him."  He went and picked up our two year old and walked over.  He went expecting to have a nice chat and clear the air, but he ended up getting blasted by the guy.  So we weren't wrong!  He did hate us!  I think his main reasons were that we had gotten the tenants, so in his mind we were bringing down the whole neighbourhood.  Perhaps it was all the swear words and the obvious rage and yelling to get off his property.  Not really sure!  But all we both knew was when he came back and told me how the whole thing had unfolded we stood there literally crying and probably at the same time said, "We're moving".

I was expecting a baby in 6 weeks.  I was really hoping we could move somehow before the baby came, so we kicked it up a notch and started searching like crazy.  We did find a place eventually that we bought on our actual anniversary.  That particular anniversary also jumps out in my mind as I was in the hospital with my 5 week old newborn who had somehow contracted viral meningitis when he was born.  So we spent a week in the hospital as he recovered.  It was quite a tumultuous time.  We didn't move before the baby was born, but within a few months we were out.

So many miracles happened during that time and so many lessons were learned. This is why it is also an anniversary of sorts.  Before we knew we needed to sell, I had been getting a sense from God that I was supposed to relinquish my home and where we lived.  It was one of the most beautiful areas I had ever lived.  It was by the lake near downtown.  I could walk everywhere.  There were big beautiful trees and beautiful parks everywhere.  I would often pray thanking God for where we lived and then I would always follow my prayer with this phrase, "Please don't make me move."  That's probably where things started to go wrong.  I was loving my stuff, my life, my house and I didn't want Him to take it away from me.

During that time I had come across Richard Foster's book on prayer.  There was a chapter in it called the "Prayer of Relinquishment".  He suggested a prayer to pray saying that sometimes God gives you back what you release to Him.  Sometimes He doesn't, but either way it is a necessary prayer to pray.  I prayed it very reluctantly, but I knew I had to.  So I started going for walks with the kids and each time I looked around loving where I lived I would pray, "Thank you Lord for where I live, but if you have a better place for us, I'm willing to give it all up.....but please don't make me move!"  So I was trying to pray the right prayer!

Shortly after that prayer was when things started to go south.  First with our neighbours and then even with one of the tenants.  It didn't matter what we did.  Something always went wrong.  She had major water leaks in her room and she was always unhappy.  Our other tenant was a "rent angel", we called him.  He never lived in our house one night.  He simply paid to have our house as a mailing address.  He traveled a lot and we think maybe we were a cover up for a secret side of his life!  So strange!  But he always paid on time! 

So between the parties our neighbours held on a regular basis, the angry people living behind us, the upset tenant in the basement, not to mention we were feeling the financial pressure of owning a big home, we finally gave in and said, "Lord!  We get it!  We'll move!"  We actually joke that God kicked us out of the neighbourhood.  In a way it had to be that way.  It had to be something that obvious or I would never have been able to see it.  I would have tried to make it work for years I'm convinced.  So that is one of the miracles - God answered so obviously.

Then, we asked our neighbour down the street who was into a new hobby of tearing down old houses and putting up new million dollar houses if he wanted our's.  He said no.  We were so disappointed, but then when we were in the hospital with my newborn he reapproached us and said yes!  We were so thrilled!  In just a matter of a few years we had, with no intelligence of our own, made a major profit on our home as our property had grown in its worth in a very short time - "ugliest home in the best neighourhood" would have been our award!  The best part of him taking our property was that we didn't have to do a thing.  Not one thing.  He was going to tear it down, too, so that meant I had no cleaning to do, no renovating to do, nothing.  With 3 children under 3, that was such a gift.  It was God's deliverance.

The house we ended up buying was also amazing.  God took us to a street called "Stillmeadow".  From the pit of despair, He literally moved us to "Psalm 23 Street".  This street was full of lovely people who loved us for 7 years.  We are still in touch with these neighbours.  One mom that I became friends with even got saved!  I had 3 more babies there and we had a "peace on every side" experience there for sure.  It was a new home so it didn't need constant renovations unless we chose to do so.  It was the perfect size, the perfect layout, the perfect location.  It was such a gift to us.  We literally outgrew it as our children would spill onto the street, the neighbour's yard, the bedrooms....I was asked if I ran a daycare one time.

This is why it is an anniversary for us.  That day when all seemed so despairing, we prayed. God answered our prayers in the most amazing way.  He taught us the most amazing things during that difficult time in our life that we could have only learned through the most difficult ways.

Yesterday, on the day of the anniversary, I read in my devotional book about trials.  This is what it said and this is what made me go back down memory lane all day:

"Do you find yourself at this very moment surrounded with needs, and nearly overwhelmed with difficulties, trials, and emergencies?  Each of these is God's way of providing vessels for the Holy Spirit to fill.  If you correctly understand their meaning, you will see them as opportunities for receiving new blessings and deliverance you can receive in no other way."

And that's exactly what happened.  Did I love going through the trial?  Not exactly, but I did wonder at the time how God was going to work it all out.  Did I see it as an emergency at the time?  Yes.  I hate emergencies with my whole heart.  But I am learning to stop seeing everything as an emergency.  They always work out.  I just have to stay calm.  I tend to panic, but I am learning that helps no one. When I choose to trust Him instead then the miracles start to happen.  We 100% received "new blessings and deliverance" that could have only come from having gone through this experience.  That trial taught us so much, including a big lesson on real estate!  Because of that experience with the man who bought our house, we went and did the same thing he did all those years ago.  We learned to price houses with boldness.  When we built our house, we built it with him in the back of our minds.  We were always thinking, "What would he do?"  As a result we sold super high when we did sell the house we built.  We credit him for what we learned from him during that time.

So yes - 18 years ago, we got told to move.  Since then we've moved more than once and we've had multiple trials along the way, a few emergencies here and there, but we've learned to see them as "God's way of providing vessels for the Holy Spirit to fill".  And that's what I'm celebrating, that I've learned so much.  I'm celebrating 18 (well more than that of course....He's been faithful my whole life, but 18 in this case!) years of watching God move in all the trials.  If you go back in my journals, then today I'm probably celebrating another anniversary of God's faithfulness.  Truly every day is an anniversary of sorts, isn't it?

Now we're on the farm.  Are all the trials magically gone?  Hardly.  Every day seems to bring a new thing to trust the Lord for.  But yesterday when we were considering all the many things to pray about, I was reminded of the day and the significance of it.  I was able to look back and say, "Yes.  God brought us through that really hard time so many years ago.  He can do it again, can't He?"  So any new trial that pops us does not need to put me in the pit of despair.  I just need to reflect and that's the whole purpose behind anniversaries anyway - to reflect, thank God for His faithfulness and then remember all of that so that when new ones come we can rest, trust and not panic.  We sat as a family and I shared the story with the kids. We all went around thanking God for what He has done and will do with our family.  Not your typical anniversary for sure, but one I won't forget.