One year ago today, April 17, I stood in the middle room of the Cosy Christmas Cottage, the little house that I rent for my massage and prayer ministry, and I prayed. I usually pray out loud and standing up, often walking around even if I am inside. I love to pray the WORD. I prayed Romans 4:17 since that Scripture matched both the date on the calendar and my deep need to remember that faith of Abraham and the power of the God on whom he called, "As it is written: I had made you a father of many nations. He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed--the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being the things that were not."
I prayed a prayer again that I had only begin praying on March 14th, just barely over a month before, when I had climbed, exhausted, on the pile of pillows that cushioned the hardwood floor beneath the Sleepy TEA'pea in the Holly Violet room. "Heavenly Father, God, I am so tired. I am grateful. So grateful to everything you have given me, I know you are leading me and have given me this beautiful vision. I know in your time, everything will come together and come to pass. I just right now feel so weary of living on top of myself and in my own way. So tired of keeping all my personal things stashed and tucked out of sight. Tired of traveling to someone else's house to shower. Tired of not feeling like I can just "be" since this is not my home. I am not ungrateful, and if this is what you have for me for this season, please give me fresh grace to carry on. I have no idea where I could even go, just a little tiny space that isn't where I work and minister. I trust you."
Up until March 14th, I hadn't even asked. I didn't have yet the clarity I needed to present my vision plainly to invited others to support me, and I had just enough up and down income to make ends meet, after falling into the abyss and filing Chapter 13 bankruptcy the year before. Recovering was slower than I imagined, and I had other things going on as well. It seemed to make more sense to they to endure until I remembered that I was thinking naturally and not supernaturally. "You have not because you ask not." Really? Is that was I was doing? Not asking? I rested on my pillows as my tears poured down the sides of my face. Well. "Every animal of the forest is mine and the cattle on a thousand hills. Psalm 50:10. If everything is his, and he is my Father, and I am tired beyond what I believe I can endure, why not ask and leave it up to him? So I did. I cried and told him how tired I was. That if he wanted to give me just a little place that was away from my work and ministry, that I would be most glad. And I fell asleep praying for my friends in Africa who had just moved their family from Arkansas and didn't have working air conditioning or a comfortable place to sleep yet, and had a baby that wasn't adjusting well to those conditions. My friend wasn't getting much sleep. She was constant on my mind and in my prayers. What I was enduring was far less. He gives more grace. Enough for her needs. Enough for mine. Enough for yours.
And so the morning of April 17, as I had other mornings in between my tears on the pillows and then, I prayed again for a place to stay away from the Cosy Christmas Cottage, for God to make a way where there didn't seem to be a way, to provide, to guide, to get me to every next step on the path.
My phone rang. It was my good friend who had also been my landlord once upon a time. "I am driving, " she said, "and I just passed a yellow truck and that made me think of you since you have a yellow truck. I need you to pray with me for God to send the perfect renter for my little tiny apartment." My heart nearly burst and my excitement jumped through the phone. "Do you know why you see that yellow truck and thought of me and called me to pray?!" I shouted with joy, "You don't even know this but I am going to tell you! I am right now standing in the middle of the Cosy Christmas Cottage praying for many things, and praying Romans 4:17--about God calling the dead back to life and things that are not as though they are, and I just asked for a place to live that is not the same place as my work and ministry!" We laughed and cried and prayed together and agreed to pray together every day until God provided an answer for both of us. She agreed to wait at least over the weekend before she mentioned it to anyone else because we were both so confident it was an answer to prayer as well as a reason to pray. I had the idea that maybe something would happen by Sunday, which was Resurrection Day, and only 3 days away. As that story demonstrates, a lot can happen in 3 days! The would be amazing and significant, and a miracle, and a clear answer! We prayed together that day which was Thursday, and then again on Friday and Saturday. Sunday was a special Resurrection Day. I woke up very early while it was still dark to watch the sunrise, read the story of Jesus' Resurrection, pray and sing.
Later that day the answer came, unexpectedly and remarkably. I was gifted some money to help with a project and it was the exact amount needed for one month's rent. I was astonished but not surprised. I knew this was my answer. This would get me in the door and assure us both that God was going to provide.
I arrived on Monday, April 21st, with a carrot cake and a card with cash. Monday was John Muir's birthday and the 111th day of the year, and both are special to me. We laughed and cried. I brought my camping mat and pillows and toothbrush later that night and made it my first night there, though the official move in day was the 1st of May. She gifted me the last 10 days of April. God is so good.
The next morning I took a shower in my own home for the first time in years, and for the first time in over 2 years, in the same space where I had slept the night before. When I told one of my friends, she said, "Ah!! Showers of blessings!" and I burst into tears. Indeed. Mercy drops round us are falling, but for the showers we plead.
After my showers of blessings, I drank from my cupp I had been sure to bring with me for that very purpose. My support that bears the words EVEN THE SPARROW. I made is prominent on the counter in the kitchen. One of my favorite promises from one of my favorite Psalms, even more dear to me now. Psalm 84:3, "Even the sparrow has found a home, the swallow a nest for herself..." Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you, I cried as I prayed, thank you! "Are you not worth much more than sparrows?" Jesus' words echo in my heart to this day.
