At the very best of times, saying ‘goodbye’ to the house that built you is a difficult thing. This was the house where we got married in the back yard. This was the house my children were born into. The youngest was born upstairs. The doorway held the record of their ages and heights. This was the only home we as a family had ever known. To leave it at all was a huge thing. To leave it in winter, with no idea where we were going, was an overwhelmingly huge thing. On one hand, we had the excitement of seeing where and how God was going to play this out. On the other hand, we had the ‘moving back into my parent’s basement’ slight sense of failure, mixed with the fear of the unknown. I got homelessness for my birthday, and it was a very mixed package indeed.

To make things more fun for everyone involved, by husband had lost his job just a little time before the move. So add unemployed to homeless. God bless my mother. We descended on her with the full force of our chaos. 2 adults, 3 kids, 3 cats, 1 dog, 12 chickens, 2 ducks and a 53′ truck trailer full of everything we owned in the world. Just for a few weeks. We’d find some land as soon as the snow melted, and we’d be off on the next phase of this adventure.

Except….

It didnt quite happen that way. A few weeks turned into a month. Then two. Then four… it was a testing place of endurance and pain and patience. Mom was delighted to have us there. Her husband not so much. He made it a point, nearly every day, to inquire in one way or another when we were leaving. It is difficult to be in a place, knowing you are burdensome, without any way to leave. We cooked, we cleaned, we did chores that needed done, but even so, 5 extra people and a circus full of animals is very disruptive to a household.

As soon as the snow melted, we began touring parcels of land. Because our goal is self-sufficiency, that means no debt. Including a mortgage. So the equity we brought out of the sale of our home is what we had. Period. Therefore the land we were touring was not exactly what one would call ‘Prime Real Estate.’ Actually, most of the places we tramped over would better be called ‘ankle-sucking swamps.’ I’m somewhat of an optimist, but even I know one has a difficult time building when the land is under water. Not to mention that tools and workmen being carried off by mosquitos tends to slow work down considerably…

We got discouraged. A lot. This dream of ours seemed very, very dim some days. The better pieces of land were either entirely out of our reach, or would wipe out our capital, leaving nothing to build with. Day after day, search after search, another swamp and another. Trusting that Father had a place for us got harder and harder and harder.

And then I found out I was pregnant with our 4th.

So let’s recap, shall we? Homeless, unemployed, housed on sufferance and pregnant, with no way forward and nowhere to go. Not exactly a recipe for serenity. Also, I had designed our houseplan around only 3 children, so I went back to the drawing board, eking out a few more square feet for another bed and space for an infant to grow up. I was honestly freaking out. Early pregnancy is a terrifying experience for me anyway, because while I get pregnant easily, I have trouble carrying to term. This was my 8th go around, with 4 miscarriages under my belt and 3 full-term births. The first trimester is not only about being tired and sick, but also about being terribly, terribly afraid.

Finally, finally, we found a piece of land. It’s funny how things work out. We had certain preconcieved notions of what our next place would be. Somewhere between 20 and 50 acres, forested, maybe with a stream of some kind. What we ended up offering on was 100 acres, clearcut, one shaky step up from being in the swamps. The opposite in almost every way from what we thought we wanted. And yet when we walked the land, we knew. THIS is it. This broken, deeply wounded piece of the earth is our mission field. Every step of the process had been bathed in prayer. Every step in the process, we invited Father to change direction, to stop, to move forward, entirely as He desired. We would follow His lead.

So much excitement. We finally had a plan and a way forward. The closing was delayed and delayed, but finally all the little legal pieces were in place. Going to the bank and getting a check cut for fully HALF of our liquid assets in one go made me feel sick to my stomach. Was this the right thing? Was it a giant mistake? Too late now, we were bound, legally.

We signed the papers on a Friday. We were overflowing with plans for what we would do over the weekend and into the next week. Let’s get this show on the road, already!

But plans are fragile things, and so easily derailed…

The day after we signed the papers, at 3 months pregnant, I miscarried again. And then 2 days after that, I hemhorraged, passed out from blood loss and ended up in the hospital for 2 days. Losing a quart of blood in less than an hour will do that to you, apparently. My recovery was painfully slow. It was over a week before I could walk from the bedroom to the couch without stopping to rest. Needless to say, moving out to raw land, pioneer style, was temporarily off the table. The waiting game continued.