Chris and her family attend Restoration Anglican Church, and here she reflects on a truth we’ve come to see again and again and again, that when God is ready to move he can do that very quickly, and he’s ready when we’re ready, and he knows when that is. Hers is a really encouraging story of this truth in action, again
Recently, I’ve been learning that God is a wild man.
It all began 18 months ago when my husband changed jobs and we could finally do something to make our “starter” house of 20 years a better fit for our family of 5.
We love our neighborhood so we ruled out moving. Each builder and architect we consulted said we should tear down and start over, so that is the path we started down.
In January of 2014, I heard a pastor named Bill Haley tell the story about how God called he and his wife Tara very unexpectedly from an inner city church to the rural countryside of Virginia where they now run a quiet retreat home called Corehaven.
In reflecting on his own journey from SouthEast DC to the Harrisonburg area, he made these statements: “God knows what you need more than you do. When he’s ready, he moves so fast it makes your head spin. He’s ready when you’re ready and he’s the only one who knows when you’re ready”
I began to pray, “Lord, what do I need?”
My husband and I thought we needed a much bigger house on our under- sized lot. We thought we needed favor with a particular man in Arlington County’s zoning office who was being a jerk and threatening to oppose our variance hearing on Sept. 11th.
As summer ended and we got ready for that hearing, my husband and I rather starkly found ourselves in some old familiar pain. He needed help with an old idol he thought he’d dealt with and I realized my own need to untangle from him in ways that would free me to be who I am meant to be. We each found counselors and life got very hard for many weeks.
On Sept. 11th, the zoning board was set to deny our variance to build that lovely house we’d spent months, hours and lots of money designing. But the board gave us the chance to defer and come back later in the year.
I think Sept. 12th was a low point for me. I honestly felt like it was all up for grabs….nothing felt safe or secure about my future , not my marriage, not my home… I cried out to God and I just plain cried, a lot.
I reminded myself that God knew what I needed more than I did. I did not agree with God that I needed more suffering and pain in my marriage.
The little words that Bill had said, “he’s ready when you’re ready and he’s the only one who knows when you’re ready” are chilling to me now that I know the suffering that “ready” can represent.
Looking back now to what felt like the hot part of the fire last Fall, God was playfully foreshadowing the future. In October, my husband and I signed up for a weekend session with a marriage guru. UNTIL, we spoke with him by phone in advance of the weekend and he told us that we should keep the huge fee and simply read his book and talk about it with each other. We went to a place we’d always wanted to stay in St. Michael’s, MD and listened to his book on tape. Not exactly a light, carefree, agenda despite the awesome venue. And yet, all weekend the sun shone brightly and I remember how the warm sun felt on my face at lunch one day. I felt like God was saying “I know you need this light, this warmth….you’ve come out of a dark and scary month”.
A few weeks later in early November, I had such a vivid dream, really just one image, that I wrote it down when I woke up. This is what I wrote:
“I dreamt of a square window that had lots of white sunshine beyond it and blue below, like a lake.”
Later that same month on a Sunday, my husband drove me to a home for sale on the Chesapeake Bay south of Annapolis and just 38 miles from my driveway in Arlington. I was literally just along for the ride, but from the moment our tires crunched over the pea gravel in the driveway, I remember looking up from a tilted glance and saying “Oh”.
Three weeks later, we saw the inside of the house with our three kids and drove home to a show of hands for who wanted to buy it instead of rebuilding in Arlington? Every hand in the car went up, including mine. That same trip ended with a stop at Harris Teeter where I ran into my friend, Molly Schaferman, in the deli who told me how much her family’s river home has meant to them and been a blessing to others.
In December, my husband and I went again before the zoning board and by the skin of our teeth won permission to build a version of the house we’d designed for our current lot. We don’t think we will do that after all and are content, for now, to not really know what we will do about our full-time home.
Last weekend, we watched the sun set over what is now “our” marsh. We saw the moon rise over the small sandy beach, just above where a catamaran was mooring for the night. The osprey whose made a nest on our dock swooped into this pink, moonlit scene.
Neil and I stood there in awe. Not just of the beauty we were seeing, but of all God has done in us and in our marriage.
God knows what you need more than you do. We thought we needed a bigger house. God thought we needed something much wilder….like a retreat.
In my wildest dreams I would not have dared to hope to have things I truly love as part of my Northern Virginia existence. Things like a wide-marsh, a dock and a sandy beach with sea shells and driftwood. In the master bedroom of the Bay house, if you lay down on the bed and look towards the wall of squarish windows, all you see is light sparkling on water.
I didn’t deserve any of it. But I’m learning to receive from a God that knows and loves me.
In Proverbs 19:21 it says, “Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.”
I hope that my story will inspire you to be open to the Lord’s purpose in your life, even if it looks different than your plans.
– Chris Macbride