I Have Been Young...

...very young, as I revealed in my first post, when I married my man. We were both pretty young, in fact. I was also very young in my walk with Christ and had much to learn. The first months of our marriage were lovely, filled with fun times with friends, enjoying our cute little apartment and the security of a new job for Mr. Brown at the University of Texas. I was completely in love with my life as a stay at home wife. Cooking, cleaning our tiny home, laundry and whatever else I could find to busy myself with filled all of an hour or two of each day. I had no car so being at home alone was, well, lonely. After about nine months of that we decided a job might not be such a bad idea after all. Because of the one car situation, it made sense for me start my job search at UT in the wild hope that I could find work there and we could ride to and from work together. Wonder of wonders, I got the very first job I applied for. It just happened to be located in an office on the second floor of the same building where my hubby worked! We loved going to work together, taking our lunches together and exploring the entire UT campus on those hour long lunchtimes. We drove home together each evening and enjoyed the same terrific holiday schedules. We didn't particularly mind the extra money, either. Funny how that works. We were in an awesome church that afforded us great teaching, community and opportunities for growth and service. We made friendships there that we still maintain to this day, even though we have moved about as far from one another as we could and still be in basically the same city. Before too long, we took the plunge and bought an adorable little house in a new suburb. Life was good.

One of the benefits of such a wonderful church was that we often enjoyed the teaching of visiting speakers in addition to that of our own wise pastor. On just such an occasion, I had the chance to attend the Sunday evening service but the hubs had to work a special event on campus. We had both been entertaining the idea that God had something special in store for us. I had begun to feel the need to be better at making a home. Being gone forty hours a week, teaching high school students in Sunday School, singing in the choir and being in a small group left little time to keep up with what had never stopped being a high priority to me, making a home. Grocery shopping, laundry and generally keeping up with all that is part of home ownership was getting harder to do. I kind of felt like I had abandoned my call. Dinners were often rushed affairs and some evenings we just couldn't even get the dishes done before dashing out the door to a meeting or church service. We began to pray about how we might rectify the situation we had made but by now, my salary covered much of our mortgage and utilities. We just couldn't do without my paycheck and a sinking, trapped feeling hovered overhead. Imagine my surprise when the message that fateful evening was about faith and obedience. The minister, I still remember his name, spoke about our need to answer with instant obedience when God calls something to our attention. Waiting until all the details lined up perfectly was not faith. He even went so far as to declare that someone in the room knew exactly what he was talking about. I know, it could have applied to anyone of us. I have been around a while and even though I may not have recognized it then, I know hype now. That was not what this was. I was pretty sure if I failed to act on what I knew God was saying to me, my heart would beat right out of my chest! I was so concerned that I could not adequately relate to Bill when he got home, what had been spoken that evening, that I requested a copy of the sermon to take home with me. Friends dropped me off and I waited not very patiently for my husband to return. I seem to remember pacing was involved. I prayed my heart out that he would hear me and that we would be unified in our decision. When he finally arrived, I asked him to sit down, that I had something he really needed to hear, and right now. He insisted instead that he needed to tell me something first. We argued back and forth for a minute or so and I reluctantly gave in and let him go first, if only to get it over with and move on to what I thought was the important part of the evening. He said, slowly and with what sounded like a bit of concern that I might freak out..."I know what you have to say...God is calling us to have you stay at home...now." I was completely dumbfounded! He was exactly right and we were in complete agreement! While it had taken a great deal of faith to endure the three years we had to wait to be married, we had never before been impressed to take such a leap of faith. We both knew that we could not make our budget without my salary. Bill felt for sure we would lose our new house. For reasons unknown to me, I was completely convinced we would not. We agreed that I would tender my resignation the next day and work only two more weeks. The adventure had just stepped up a notch. We had no idea what would await us but we had determined that "Sink or swim, we were going on with God."  To us that meant walking right up to the edge of the light, where the darkness starts, and taking another step. We wrote that resignation letter together, carefully wording  it to accurately reflect the reason and leave on the best of terms. We slept peacefully that night, content that there was no better place to be than squarely in the will of God. The outcome was His.

I have been young and now I am old,

Yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken

Or his descendants begging bread.

Psalm 37:25

To be continued...