Here's how it all started
Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton
For the past few years, Chad and I have felt that God was preparing us for something. We had thought it could be leading worship at a church-but then at other times we thought it was opening a coffee shop. We were obviously lacking direction. We prayed for God to give us some clarity for so long and we just heard silence. But you know God-He was working on us (as individuals and in our marriage) to prepare us for what was to come.
Fast forward to April 2017-
We were in the process of talking about having kids. We loved our home but didn’t feel like it was the place to raise kids. So we started to look around (BTW-we love to look at homes) and didn’t really find anything we were happy with…until we did. Here was what I wrote in my diary:
“I’ve felt stagnate for a long while now in many areas of my life and I can’t help but wonder if God is ever going to bust something open-ever. My biggest fear is unfulfilled potential and I feel this a lot.
My husband and I recently found a home that was our “forever home.” This place was a 200 year old house that was plantation like. It was big and spacious that was just oozing with charm. The best part was-it had been refinished-so it was stylish.
Now this just wasn’t any ordinary home-the previous owners had used this place as a wedding venue (oh yessssss). The pictures were beautiful. My husband and I had started planning out our life at this home. We could host weddings, one of the extra bedrooms could be my photography studio, etc…
We prayed about it and in a matter of 1 week: we had went to look at the home, fell in love with it, sold our house (contingent on if we got this dream home) with a great cash offer, got pre-approved to buy this house, put down our trust money and made an offer. We felt pretty awesome about everything.
This house hadn’t had anyone look at it in over six months so we already felt like this home was ours…until out of nowhere-some women from out-of-state comes in and offers full price.
Talk about deflated.
All the dreams we had. All the plans we had. All the places for our future children to play. The potential to have a photography studio/perfect location for me. A beautiful wedding venue that could be a business that we ran.
Gone.
Now it seemed as if we didn’t have a future. That nothing would ever change. Same job. Same house. Same everything. This is coming at a time where we both already feel stagnate.
But God…
As Christians, we have to remember that God is in the works of something for us. Even when we can’t see it…God is there. He knows our hearts, our visions and even better-He knows our potential. He knows what is best for us-even when we STRONGLY disagree.
So even in the middle of feeling down, I have to remind myself that this is what faith is for. We can’t see anything happening, we can’t see any movement anywhere…but we have to trust God.”
After we picked ourselves up from being defeated, we went to look at one more house in Harriman, TN. We instantly fell in love with this property and decided to put in an offer to try and make this dream a reality. This is where our story begins….