For When You've Got More Than You Can Handle And Then Some More

They say when God calls you to do something it will be beyond your ability to handle it all by your little self. That is why stepping out in faith always has a little bit of fear with it. And God encourages so often those He is calling, “Do not fear.”


They say that is what walking by faith is like. Beyond yourself. I like to think of it, as “walking a little bit above the ground”.


The Bible says anything not from faith is sin. Romans 14:23  So that means I must always be about some kind of business that requires more than I’ve got.


That isn’t to say God wants us to walk around overwhelmed with tasks and spinning dizzy while we live on this planet. It’s to say that when we are leaning on His strength, living by His power, that we will be able to accomplish so much more than humanly possible. So we who walk by faith will look a bit crazy to onlookers. Even our fellow sojourners sometimes.

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And we’ve been living crazy here.



If I didn’t hear God, and if I wasn’t confident He was leading us, I’d be up to my eyeballs crazy. But God is real, and I’ve been following His lead long enough to know when it is Him. (And that even if it wasn’t, and we’d heard Him wrong, I trust He’d work it for good . . .)


August 2013 we moved out of our farmhouse. With D working in North Dakota, we had one week to get out of the house, and then it took us six more to unload and store and rid ourselves of excess.


Then we were on ‘layover’ in a rented home that we happened to formerly own. Dale quit his job the day after closing on our farm which took 4 years to sell. We were not upside down on our mortgage, but came away with less than we would need to NOT take out a 30 year mortgage. (we are mid-life here)


After looking at a $29,000.00 home (very low for up here) little fixer-upper and not getting it, we felt the Lord put on our hearts to buy a house to fix up and sell in order to better ourselves financially. Crazy to do in this market, but you know . . . Faith.


So we finally found one and set closing for the end of April. In the meantime we found the house we are in and (long story short) a friend bought it for us. So we closed on the MN house Thursday, and on Friday they closed on the WI house which we will purchase after selling the MN one.


All of May we readied this house we are in, which had been vacant for 10 years. We had water in the basement, raccoon babies in the chimney which was rusted shut, red squirrels in the eaves, rusty everything. Smelly panelling which I painted (and painted and painted), filthy closets, mouse trails around the outside edges of the floors (minor considering all things) and I got poison Ivy to boot.


Then, all of June after moving our main pieces here, I hauled all of our stored belongings from the basement, unpacked, and brought back what I didn’t need, to have a garage sale in our borrowed house/garage (good location). After about fifty trips, losing my dad, getting poison ivy again all over legs and forearms (looked like leprosy-seriously!) I had the final sale there the last weekend of June.


Which brings us to ‘now’. My husband has done much of the ‘background work’ on the other house over summer which allowed me reprieve and settle in here a bit, start up fall ministries, and NOW my part kicked in on the house-for the past month I guess, painting, painting, painting and shopping, picking out lights, colors, and helping hubs with anything else. He is pusher. We are out of funds-which makes the push greater, not to mention it is absolutely BEAUTIFUL driving up to the house, so it would sell best this season-which passes far too quickly!


So, we have been in kind of a crazy chaos here more often than not over the course of the past 14 months, and I have learned to, what I call, ‘ride the wave of God’. One. Day. At. A. Time.


In the meantime, God is launching me into more speaking and writing. A call I heard in 1995 for “one day…” and have pursued over these years at His direction. And it seems “now” is “one day”!


After forever, and overcoming a LOT of fear, much training has taken place via life-experience, through my teaching and speaking at church, participating in Toastmasters, She Speaks, Allume, etc. Now suddenly (or not so…) the waters are astir and I have three speaking engagements in the coming months which I will share more about in an upcoming post.


But for now . . . I’m extremely excited to share with you this news!

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I’ve been invited to contribute to an online faith-building community that is launching TODAY called Deeper Waters. I hope you will take some time exploring the beautiful website and find it to be a place of refreshment for daily life. You will find encouragement in the categories of Faith/Marriage/Parenting/Friendship/Creativity.


I’m inviting you to step into the waters with me . . . or step out upon the waters as the case may be . . . Dive in by clicking here: Deeper Waters Home

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