The Building of The House

   *Disclaimer- We are gonna build the house and leave the house, so you hear the best part sooner, then go back to talk about living in the house. This makes sense in my head.


   When Andy and I came to Lubbock, there was a standing offer from a builder in our church. He would build a custom home at cost for any of the pastors on staff. We had been there 2 1/2 years and hadn't really felt led to take him up on this generous offer. After things settled down with Berkley and our finances, we began looking at houses. We wanted to be close to the church, in a good school district and we wanted to be able to entertain in our home. We spent several weeks looking, but continually came back to the builder.

 

   Please understand, there were a number of reasons that we were cautious and hesitant about building a house. It was not at all a case of us dying to do this or refusing other options. It was never something we were cavalier about. There's a lot of gray area in building a house. If you have ever done this before, you know it's easy to go over budget and easy to take longer than you anticipated. In fact, I would say it's normal if you do both. But we are not normal people...no snickering. We didn't have a flexible budget that gave us latitude and we really had a short window between our busy seasons that would work to move. From the beginning, everything in the natural made us want to wait and find something else. But, our spirits kept drawing us towards building. We weren't sure why we felt like the Lord was leading us to do this, but we did feel certain He was. So we began praying, we prayed for protection through the process, wisdom in decision making, and that finances would come available as needed. And, in March we broke ground on THE HOUSE.

As soon as it was framed, we had our family and both sets of grandparents come to the house and we had a house blessing. This does not involve incense or holy water. Each of us had spent several days praying about what Bible verses we felt the Lord leading us to and then we showed up with babies, blankets, Bibles and Sharpies....lots of Sharpies.

   We went room by room and prayed in agreement  over every specific area. We prayed for each of the kids rooms by name, asking for protection, wisdom and joy as we parent them. We prayed for their tender little hearts, as this would be the room they would learn about Christ, say bedtime prayers and one day ask Him into their hearts. And then we each wrote our chosen Scriptures.                    

   And, then we prayed in the Name of Jesus, by the blood of Jesus that the Enemy be bound from our children, our marriage and our home. Because we have just enough Holy Ghost in us!  Ha-laaaay-loooooo!

  

   There is no magic in what we did. It's not any kind of enchantment or spell. It's way more powerful than that. What we, did as a family, was acknowledge that everything we have comes from God. Our children, our marriage, our resources and yes, our new home was a direct result of His grace and provision. And because He has blessed us, we were committing to keeping our covenant with Him, in how we preserve each of these areas. Andy and I are very easy going and spontaneous people, but we are intentional and deliberate about things that are important. We were intentional about building the house. We didn't know how important this house would be, but we knew it was important and we knew we needed God in it. We wanted God's Name and Word in the foundation we built on, on the beams that would support our earthly covering, on the walls and in the halls, on the doors that we would pass through.....in and out of our sanctuary, in and out of our mission field.



Thoughtfulness went into every phase of the house. Even the lot was not an accident. The only lot the builder had available when we decided to build was less than half a mile and directly in front of the church with nothing separating us but a field and a dirt road. We could walk out our front door and to the South, see  our church, completely unobstructed. In the coming months, I often found myself standing in the yard, looking towards the church.



This verse, Hebrews 13:15 will be significant later.


    Anyone who has a home, whether they built it or not, has a tremendous sense of ownership and affection for their home. And, it was no different for us......Maybe a little different.....perhaps a tad.

    My first career was as an interior designer. I spent years planning and designing other peoples homes and I thoroughly enjoyed it. But, as I'm sure you can imagine, there is some level of frustration when you are always creating someone else's vision. It's still fun, but with every project you find yourself spending as much time thinking about what you would have done, if it were yours.
  
   Don't get me wrong, I got to fix up whatever house we were in, however I wanted to. (Thank you, honey!) But, building your own home from the dirt up, is every designer's dream job. In my case, outlandishly unrealistic fantasy job. People in ministry don't build new houses. At least, not very often. Perhaps better said, people in ministry don't go into ministry with this on their short list of objectives.
  
   Our builder gave us lots of freedom and opportunity to make choices and I took full advantage of every one. I got to pick out every light, every mirror and every knob. And not out of a set choice list or predetermined options. If I could find it reasonably, I could use it. It was the most fun I'd ever had! And it wasn't just picking out stuff either, I got to design every inch of every room. Inches, people! My favorite thing in my former, glamorous (Ha!) life was kitchen design. I spent weeks drawing elevations of cabinets, squeezing every inch out of every foot. I spent countless hours walking out traffic patterns and testing better heights and widths. I'm sure Andy thought I was a lunatic, as soon as he would come home I would start laying out wrinkled sheets of graph paper, taped together, with bits of fruit or smudgy finger prints all over them. And I would give him my "pitch" of why this one must go here or there or how ridiculous kitchens designed by men were...neanderthals. He would just smile and say "Great." "I love it." I knew he was just as excited as I was and didn't have the words to express it....enter winking emoticon here. Y'all by the time it was time to actually cut a piece of wood for a cabinet, I had done an entire virtual model of the kitchen using nothing but eyeshadow and the Crayola 48 as my palette! I was a nut! It was so gratifying and so fun. I enjoyed the whole process, hang ups and all.

 

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