What do you do when your landlord increases your rent from $750 to $1600? Especially when you often already have more month left at the end of the money than money at the end of the month.
Imagine you’ve lived in that rented home for eight years. You have one family income and three children still in school. You dream of buying a home, but house prices have spiraled too. Your situation seems hopeless.
Our friends Dan and Jaime McLeod faced all that, a while ago. A bleak outlook, by any angle – except for one. The one huge thing that kept them standing: their faith that God would lead them home. Which home, where and when, they didn’t know. They started packing and kept on trusting.
“Mom,” asked one of the children one day, “do you have a back-up plan?”
Jaime responded honestly: “No, no backup plan. All we have is faith that Jesus will guide us.”
She remembers that well. “We were going to be homeless soon and we still had no idea what we were going to do. I prayed constantly for answers but it felt like God just wasn’t answering me.”
Then Jaime remembered a small phrase she’d read somewhere: “The teacher is always silent during the test.” She and Dan began to understand that God had a plan, but first they had to step through the door of uncertainty. To trust Him like Peter did when he stepped out of the boat and walked on the water to meet Jesus.
“I found myself holding onto the door as hard as I could because of fear of the unknown,” she recalls. But they had no choice. They gathered their family together and walked through the door. Suddenly, everything changed.
They kept their faith in God and their trust in his plan, even while they packed up their house. Dumped a lot, stored some, and moved into the first of several hotels. Oh, sure, they had family and friends, but family lived far off, and not many people have enough room to house a family of five for an indefinite time.
Jaime remembers one of the low points. Her teenage daughter mentioned that she planned to download something “when we get home.”
“Chelsea,” said her younger brother, “we’re never going home.”
But after a month of trusting, praying, hoping, and yes, worrying, home showed up. Just their size. In a good place. In the perfect time. And at the right price.
They’re home now. They bought the place. God said yes to their prayers.
All along, Jaime remembers, Christ the Teacher silently educating her about many things, especially the importance of prayer. “It’s our life-line to God. All we need. It was what kept me from falling to pieces.” She learned the hard lessons of keeping her focus on her Lord, of not looking behind or too far ahead.
Today, she wants to tell her family’s story - to encourage others facing difficult times.
I told her I’d help.
