Here is a note I wrote during the process of trying to sell our home in the US in 2014. This was before we made the decision to not settle down again, but become nomadic backpackers instead.
So today we were running around doing our duties for the day: 8am I picked up boxes for moving at Harris Teeter when the delivery truck came. 8:30am once again back home, I tried to go back to bed. But all the fluttery feelings about moving kept me from accomplishing much in the area of sleep.
I finally got up since a lady was supposed to come at 11:30am to take my bureau. There was only a short amount of time to sell the rest of our belongings before the new home owners moved in.
I went down stairs to see that I had missed a slew of phone calls from Craigslist while in bed. There were people calling about all kinds of things. The person I enjoyed talking to the most was Ellie.
Ellie was a lady who brightly answered her phone when I called her back. She excitedly told me how she would LOVE to buy our two beds. She would get a neighbor to help pick them up and would come around 12pm.
Quite a few people came to the house that day, but I am so thankful Ellie came. Ellie arrived with two men who spoke English, but not perfectly. Both Ellie and the men had moved to the US from Latin America. They encouraged us that we would do great in either Central or South America. And I loved hearing them speak Spanish, especially when one guy was talking to me, couldn’t think of the word in English, said it in Spanish and somehow I understood.
I gladly realized after they left that we now had 3 beds and 3 people left in the house. Taking a small break between visitors, I am sitting on the pool chair on the back porch. My mom came out to tell me that the people buying the house just terminated the contract. The feeling when she spoke the news was a mix of dread and fulfilled expectation. The dread was composed of my fears of this happening and the crushing of my strongly clenched hope that we would actually be leaving.
The fulfilled expectation was something of a relieved feeling. All along I kept believing in the back of my mind, though I certainly didn’t want to give any attention to it, that there was a reason all of this was not going to go through, that things weren’t going to work out, and we were going to be disappointed and stuck again.
But are we stuck? Are we actually supposed to get out and leave the country? Some things point to this. Mom said that God once asked her a question. “What would you do if you knew you lived in Nazi Germany before it happened?” He asked. “I would leave,” she replied.
For me, it was all those times opening up in the Bible and reading about the destruction of mystery Babylon (which in my opinion is now the USA) and how we are supposed to “leave, flee, go out of” her and escape her falling. In the hotel room when were we visiting Hilton Head Island, I started researching what country we should go to. I have friends and some, though small, contacts in Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Brazil, and Ecuador.
Could I even handle it down there? Am I kidding myself?
Seeing joyful Ellie made Mom and I want more of those kinds of people in our lives. Facing the unknown with faith is our strongest option, whether we leave or if we stay.
“Remember this: God is not merely concerned with results but with character—and few things produce character like learning how to wait.” – Gary Thomas
