Nowhere to Call Home
For most people, retirement is a bit scary, but senior folks usually have a house, with or without a mortgage. We live in the sunny state of Florida, where many residents have not one house, but two. They have one up north for the warmer months, and one here when the snow chases them south.
We were not so fortunate. My husband, Jim, was a pastor for over thirty years. His churches were small congregations in rural areas of New York, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Florida. Though the salary was low by most standards, all the churches provided a parsonage, so we always had a place to live.
When Jim reached age sixty-six, and started drawing Social Security, we realized that retirement was right around the corner, as well as the possibility of major health issues that could keep him from performing his duties as a pastor. If he suddenly needed to leave the ministry, what would we do? An even more serious thought was what would I do if he had a major heart attack that took his life?
We had sold our home in South Carolina thirty-one years earlier, enabling us to attend Bible college, so we had nowhere to call home. Our denomination has several retirement communities for pastors, there are government-subsidized facilities for low-income people, and of course there are our children. Feasible options for some, perhaps, but not for us.
Our prayer was pretty simple: “Lord, retirement is close and we have nowhere to call home. Please show us your plan.”
God had provided for our family in so many miraculous ways over the years, but what would He do now? James 1:5 says, “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.”
So we asked for wisdom.
First, we had to decide where we wanted to live. We have four grown children. Two live in Florida, fairly close to where we were living, and two live up north. North was not an option, because Jim is a southern boy and had a difficult time dealing with the snow and cold. Being an avid saltwater fisherman, he wanted to be close to the water so he could spend his retirement years fishing. We finally decided on the west coast of Florida, a little farther north of us in an area called the Nature Coast.
Jim began to search the Internet for homes in that area. As he searched for a place that wasn’t too far from the water, I prayed for a place in the woods. His soul is refreshed breathing in the salt air, while mine is renewed listening to the wind whistling through the trees and soaking in the wonderful sights, sounds, and smells of God’s fabulous creation.
Psalm 37:4 says, “Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” I was wondering how God was going to do that when we had different desires.
Over the next months, Jim lined up places to look at. We knew our retirement income wouldn’t amount to much, so we needed a place with a low mortgage payment. We needed a place with a shed. Jim dabbles in woodworking, so he wanted enough land to have a workshop. We also needed space for two vehicles and his flatboat. A porch would be nice, since we have his grandfather’s wooden swing—an heirloom close to a hundred years old.
We looked at houses on our days off, but most of what we found didn’t have useable acreage or the price wasn’t workable.
Sometime in October, Jim lined up three properties. The first one was on two acres. It was a beautiful property, but the house was small with no storage building or garage. Since we were in the same area as the third property, we decided to go by and look at it before our appointment with the realtor at the second property. We drove down an asphalt road that turned into dirt right at the edge of the property. It was a manufactured home (not what we wanted, but probably all we could afford) on two and a half acres.
We parked the car and sat there for a moment taking it all in. There was a large storage building. Across half of the house front was a large screened porch that wrapped around to a side door. Scrub oaks intermingled with pine trees filled most of the front and side yards, as well as the area behind the house.
As Jim walked the back area, I felt at home. When Jim came back to the car, he echoed the same words. Our dilemma was that the realtors had told us the property was under contract. A young couple was trying to buy it, but there had been many delays and problems with financing.
We drove to the second house on our list and arrived before the real estate agent got there. The house looked small and with the sloping back yard there was no place to put the workshop Jim needed. We called the realtor and told her we weren’t interested.
Driving back to the “house in the woods,” we wondered if this was the place for us. It seemed to fit what we both wanted. It was only about twenty minutes from the water, Jim’s desire, and was sitting in the woods, fulfilling mine. If only someone else didn’t already have dibs on it!
We drove to the back of the property, where the realtors met us. Jim told them we had looked around earlier and really liked what we saw on the outside. We would certainly be interested should the present contract fall through.
The Bible tells us in Philippians 4:19, “My God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.”
God knew that we needed a house to call home even before we prayed, so we shouldn’t have been surprised when the realtors told us that the contract had expired at noon—it was now 1 p.m. We wanted to shout our praise to the Lord! Did He hold the house under contract until we could find it?
Some would say, “Really? You really believe that?”
Yes, I really believe that.
This is not the end of the story. Though the house needed much work inside, we knew this was a gift from God and an answer to prayer. We put in an offer, the sellers countered, and we accepted.
Now we had to get financing. We sat for hours at our bank trying to get a mortgage. Their computers were down, then slow—on and on it went until we finally had the loan papers in hand. After looking them over, we didn’t see how we could possibly make the payments, and when we looked at the interest and what we would actually be paying for the house, we were flabbergasted.
We looked at each other, feeling deflated, not knowing what to do. We didn’t believe God would have us get into debt like that, and we would probably both have to hold down full time jobs till the mortgage was paid in thirty years. We would be in our nineties! We left the bank after telling the loan officer that we needed to think about it.
As we talked and prayed about it, God supplied the answer. Each denominational church Jim had served had put a small monthly amount into a retirement fund for him. Over twenty-plus years that amount had grown, and without our even realizing it, God had been providing the money we needed to pay cash for our retirement home. We bought when the market was low and the property needed a lot of work, so the price was almost ridiculous for two and a half acres. But most important, God’s hand was in it.
And that’s not the end of the story, either. The Lord allowed us to work for the next nine months, which gave us the opportunity to put our Social Security into a building fund so we could make repairs. We closed on the house in November, and traveled the two hours back and forth on our days off and vacation to work on it.
We retired in June, and moved to our house in the woods on July 4. There was enough money left in the retirement fund for Jim to purchase the workshop he wanted with a few dollars left.
Every once in a while, Jim checks the Internet to see if there’s anything comparable to our house-in-the-woods gift from God. Nothing even comes close. How awesome is our God!