The Building of Our Home ~ Part 1

I’ve had some requests to share our story about building our home. It is a long story, so I will do it in parts. The only place I know to start a story is at the beginning…

We have wanted to build our own house for many years; actually it has been our dream since the day we married, almost 22 years ago. About four and a half years ago, God began to lead us in the direction of fulfilling that lifelong dream. He also gave us a perfect object lesson in trust & patience. Our hearts were to NOT go in debt to build this new home. We wanted, with all our hearts, for this home to be paid for when it was finished. Unfortunately, we didn’t see any possible way that could happen…but…God’s ways are never our ways, and He had plans that we could not have envisioned.

Rewind with me for a moment, back to August 29, 2005. If you live anywhere near the Gulf of Mexico, then you know, without hesitation, what happened on that fateful day….Hurricane Katrina hit with catastrophic force. Undoubtedly it was one of the worst, if not THE worst force of nature I have ever experienced. The aftermath was like nothing I could have ever imagined. It was as if we were immediately transported to a third world country. All of our modern conveniences were gone, in an instant. BUT, you’ve all heard the stories of Katrina’s aftermath and that’s not what this story is about anyway. But that is part of the beginning our story.

Within a week after Katrina hit, my daddy had the thought that it was a shame for all these trees to go to waste…and boy were there LOTS of trees down. So he decided to purchase a sawmill and start milling some of the trees into lumber. Thanks Dad! ;) Well, that created within my dear husband a vision. He began to envision all of us working together as a family to build our dream. Of course, now I understand that it was all the workings of our Holy Spirit, leading and guiding us in His ways. He began to show us, unfold parts of His plan, if you will. And so began our labor of love, and of faith and patience.

Stacy approached me about it first with the warning that what he was about to suggest would NOT be easy, nor would it be quick. It would take LOTS of hard work and about five years to see it through to completion. I have to admit, I didn’t mind the hard work part, but I wasn’t too keen on waiting five years! I’m an instant gratification kind of girl, especially where this was concerned. We had been dreaming about this new home for sooo long AND we were quickly running out of room in our current 1200 square foot mobile home. With three growing boys, all of whom are homeschooled, space was severely limited. However, we were thankful for what we had.

So, his plan was that we would cut all the trees we could get our hands on,

load them on a trailer,

haul them to my daddy’s sawmill, which is about ten miles away,

mill them into lumber

and when we had enough, we would start our dream home. Now, at the time, our boys were 13, 9 1/2, and almost 5. By now we are near the end of 2005. In the meantime, we would need to save as much money as we could to put towards parts of the house that we couldn’t mill ourselves, such as a concrete foundation and a metal roof. We approached our boys with our plan and they were full of excitement at the thought of a new, bigger house. We assured them though, that it was going to take lots of sacrifice to save money, on everyone’s part, and also lots of hard work from each of us. They assured us with all the excitement they could muster that they were fully on board with the plan. They are real troopers!

In January 2006 we officially started to work on the trees and milling the lumber. That was a long process, but then, most every step along the way has been a long process. Once we got all the lumber that we would need, it would need to dry for at least 6 months before we could use it.

Blessings,

~Amy