The Blessings of Fasting

For anyone who has read our blog for any amount of time, you know that we are a Christ centered home. We don't try to announce it every chance we get because we would hope that it is seen through our actions.

That being said, this entry will be all about His Grace. Once a month at our church we fast. Fasting is a time that we can come closer to our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. While we do fast in our church once a month, we have also fasted at other times when we felt there was something we felt we needed answers or guidance about.

This week fell into that category. Our housing situation was starting to weigh a bit heavy on our minds and our finances. After praying over and over we knew we were not supposed to buy a house here, that we were to wait for on-post housing. The kids are all settled in their schools, we are starting to get involved in the community, every prayer resulted in feeling that we were meant to live on post.

Every day when we called Housing we were met with more bad news. It seemed the time for waiting got longer and longer instead of shorter. We have been calling around for rentals and temporary housing. We were being frustrated as everywhere we turned there was a closed door. While I love the Army, I was starting to lose my faith in their system. How do you move families to new places and not have resources for them? How do you explain putting families in a financial bind? As we were faced with this challenge, we thought about those new to the Army with fewer resources then we had, how would they fare? We continued to pray and I had peace that all would work out. Kevin had lots of stress.

We decided that we would fast. We asked the boys if they would like to join us, letting them know that we understood if they didn't feel ready. Michael and Neil readily agreed. Daniel thought about it. He decided that he would join in. We let him know that he could end the fast anytime he wanted, we knew he was still young and might not be able to tolerate fasting for 24 hours.

Our fast for me was very enlightening. I slept better, I felt rested and felt much peace. Both the older boys said they felt really good. Poor Daniel started to struggle about lunch time. We could tell with the change in his demeanor but he would not break his fast. He was determined to go all the way.

We broke our fast with prayer. No time through our fast did we pray for a house. We prayed that the Lord would guide us according to His will and we were willing to accept whatever that was.

If it meant moving into a hotel for 3 months, renting an unfurnished apartment and sleeping on air mattresses for a couple months, we even entertained the Idaho of me going home to my parents and living there until a house on post came available.

Kevin spent an hour making call after call today finally getting a lead on an economy apartment not too far from post. It wasn't the ideal situation but we were willing. And I was prepared to call my mom and ask if I could come home if that didn't work out.

We were literally on our way to check out the apartment when Kevin received a phone call. The lady asked if we were still interested in living on post. Kevin said yes! We soon had an appointment to go look at a house. We knew the Lord had His hands in this. We had just been to Housing not even an hour earlier and the lady was very grim when she told us that we were on the slowest list with the least amount of houses available. She said we would be lucky to get in 3-6 months. So we were very surprised when this other lady called us.

She told us that this street had just become available, it was only open for a certain rank and we were the first on the list to be called.

It's an older house but it's a solid house. It's an individual house versus a duplex style. We did lose 300 square feet from what we had at Hood but we will manage. We weighed all the different aspects. Would it be worth our housing allowance? Because it's an older house, all of our utilities are included without being metered. We also will have our lawn taken care of both in mowing and with the leaves clean up at no cost to us. We have hardwood floors, no stairs and no carpet! We felt that it was worth our BAH. We have a beautiful view of a tree line from our back door, that also means no back neighbors. We get to keep Daniel in his school which was something he prayed for. We will be less then a mile from Kevin's office and are close by the PX and the commissary.

We know that this house is a blessing and we accept it as such. Sure we could have waited the 3-6 months for a slightly bigger, newer house but we know that this is the where the Lord wants us.

God is good and when we ask of Him and understand His Will, we will be blessed.