#stillbelieving

I've heard that you don't get your miracle without going through misery, that the two go hand in hand. However you want to say it, the reality is, we don't need a miracle when things are going as we want them to. The very nature of needing a miracle means we are in some place of lack, an unmet need, an unfulfilled longing. Misery. 

Well, while we were losing our house, in the midst of misery and pain, there was a miracle growing inside of me at the same time. I mentioned earlier that I was 5 months pregnant while I was packing and preparing our house to be sold. This was our 4th baby, but 5th pregnancy. Let me go back a bit to explain, actually all the way back to when I was pregnant for the first time, in 2009.

Asif and I had celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary several weeks before Jaedon was born. Previously, we (more specifically "I") weren't sure if we were even going to have children. Not because of any biological reason (we hadn't ever tried to get pregnant), but because we just weren't sure that we wanted to be parents. I, in particular, had zero motherly urges/instincts. Even as a little kid, I was never interested in baby dolls, even though all my friends were. As a young woman, I would hear other women talk about how cute babies were and how badly they wanted one and I couldn't relate at all. I felt like perhaps something was wrong with me. In fact, not only did I seem to be broken in the motherly instinct arena, I was truly terrified of getting pregnant. It was something I dreaded and I imagined that God was going to make me get pregnant to teach me a lesson, since I feared it so much. I spent the first eight years of our marriage with this dread looming over me.

Well, when I finally did get pregnant (we weren't trying, but we had stopped preventing), I had just gone through the darkest, most soul-revealing season of my life and as a result was transformed in my hear. I was very humble and open to anything God brought my way. The details of that season are for another chapter, but the point is that my heart was in a completely different place than ever before. I no longer had that fear of getting pregnant and when I got the positive sign on that pregnancy test stick, I was genuinely happy! Nervous for sure, but happy. 

Asif and I knew that we wanted to find out the gender of the baby at the 20 weeks ultrasound, so we decided to pick some names before then. This was in 2009, when Borders bookstore was still around, so instead of googling names, we opened up a real baby name book in the cafe at Borders. We went through it alphabetically and got stuck in the "J" section because we liked so many "J" names. We immediately decided on Jaedon for a boy and we liked both Jordin and Jasmyn for a girl (these exact spellings were decided later!). When we found out that our first baby was a boy, that made it easy - Jaedon it was! 

Well, it turns out that motherhood was the most incredible thing I had ever experienced and my fears had been completely replaced with a deep love for Jaedon and a longing to have more children. Asif and I discussed how many, debating on 3, 4, 5, or even 7, but we finally settled on 4 so that we could have even-numbered teams for future family game nights. I even wished for 2 boys and 2 girls, so that we could have the option to play boys vs. girls at times. Additionally, I decided that the best age gap between kids would be 2 years apart. So if it all went as planned, we would have a new baby every 2 years, making it so our 4th baby would arrive in 2016, 6 years after Jaedon's birthday in 2010. 

Well, baby number 2 arrived a little over 2 years after Jaedon was born and she was a girl so she got the name Jasmyn. At this point we only had a girl name left so Asif and I tossed names back and forth over the years to try to have a boy option as well. Of course it had to be a “J” name, we couldn't have someone left out, but no name seemed to fit. I liked some that Asif didn't, he liked some that I didn't, but no name we came across was one we both liked. Nothing seemed to be quite right. So when I got pregnant with baby number 3, right on schedule for summer, 2014, we didn't know what we would do if it was a boy! Well, God made that one easy on us, she was a girl so that used up the last name we had decided on - Jordin. The 3 names we already chose had been used, but what about baby number 4?

One day, when it was about time for me to get pregnant for the 4th time (at least according to my schedule), Asif called me and said, "Look up the name 'Jackson'!" The meaning of the names we chose was important to us, we had ruled out other names because we didn't like the meaning. So when I googled "Jackson," I was expecting to read, "son of Jack," but instead what came up blew me away: " God has been gracious; He has shown us His favor." What?!? Not only was this a beautiful meaning in general, it had specific meaning to us as well, because only a few weeks earlier Asif had started regularly praying the following prayer over our 3 kids before bed: 

“May the Lord bless you and protect you. May the Lord smile on you and be gracious to you. May the Lord show you his favor and give you his peace.” Numbers 6:24-26 NLT

The phrases, "God has been gracious" and "He has shown us His favor" from the meaning of “Jackson” were right from that passage. That was it. This seemed like an inspiration from God. We had a fourth name. 

Only a few weeks later I got pregnant, wow!! It was all going along as I had planned, this baby's due date was almost the same day as Jasmyn's 4th birthday would be, making my “have-babies-2-years-apart” goal complete! We quickly told people we were pregnant and included the story of this baby being Jackson. "What if it's a girl?" was the common reply. Asif and I believed that God gave this name to us as a promise and we were on a faith journey that included believing that God gives us the desires of our heart. We wanted 4 kids, 2 boys and 2 girls, and we were down to the last spot in our family being filled. We desired a boy and believed that God had promised us a boy with the divine timing of how the name "Jackson" was  brought to our attention. No matter what people said, we held to our belief, reassuring them that if it was a girl, we would be TRULY thrilled and grateful. It was scary, because while I believed that God had promised us a Jackson, it was so risky to actually tell people that. But we believed that we were supposed to talk about it, no matter how people responded.

My first appointment with my midwife was too early to try to hear a heartbeat, so at my second appointment (about 12 weeks), we brought the 3 kids and told them they would hear the baby's heartbeat. We all listened with anticipation as she put the doppler tool on my belly. She tried one spot on my belly, then another, then another. She had me shift my position a bit and then tried again. Nothing. No familiar "whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh," that I so easily heard with my other 3 pregnancies. It felt like time had stopped and we were stuck. The anticipation and excitement I had coming into this appointment gradually gave way to dread and a lump in my throat. Hopefully it was just a fluke, hopefully for some reason the baby was hiding or something. Hopefully everything would be ok. . . 

To be continued in Miracles and Misery Pt. 2.

IMAGE CREDITS:

Freestocks - Unsplash

Jonathan J Cast - Unsplash

Zhen Hu - Unsplash

Aaron Burden - Unsplash

In the Bible, there is a passage that says, “He brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me.” (2 Samuel 22:20 NIV). Ironically, I became aware of this verse at a time when I was in one of the least spacious places I’ve ever lived in, even tighter than our current 1 bedroom apartment. That is one story, but first, I have to tell you the story about how we ended up living in that tight place:

In early 2017, after many months of going back and forth with the bank that held our mortgage (hours of phone calls, pages of paperwork, and heaps of stress), we eventually got told that we were facing imminent foreclosure. I will never forget that phone conversation. I had essentially been lied to by the person who was my assigned “contact” at the bank, being told that if I applied for a certain program, everything would work out and we would be able to keep our house. 

The Fight to Keep Our House

You see, we had fallen behind on our mortgage about 18 months after moving into our first home, because our well-established photography business had suddenly taken an unexpected dive. When that happened, I immediately applied for the bank’s forbearance program and got approved for 6 months of reduced payments so we could get our income back up. What they didn’t tell me was that we would be responsible to pay all the interest and the balance of the payments when the term was up. I was expecting to pay our regular mortgage payment on January 1st, 2017, but instead got a bill saying we owed over $10,000. I thought for sure it was a mistake, but after spending hours on the phone (mostly on hold, of course), found out that I had been misled. 

After several months of being told that we just had to fill out another application to be able to keep our home and diligently trying all options they gave us, we received a letter in the mail from a law office. The letter said they represented our bank and were responsible for collecting the debt we owed - NOT the $10,000 in past payments, but the entire balance of our mortgage! I had been told that as long as I was in the application process, everything was on hold and this wouldn’t happen. So I called my contact person again and this time asked to speak to a supervisor. The supervisor proceeded to tell me that our mortgage had gone to collections MONTHS ago and that I was wrong to believe that we had any chance of keeping our home. It had already been charged off and there was nothing we could do except cooperate with the foreclosure or sell it ourselves to pay off the entire debt. At that moment I felt like I had been punched in the chest. Literally got the wind knocked out of me. The tiny bit of hope I had been hanging onto this whole time was totally crushed. 

This was our first home. I had always wanted a house and I loved living there. It wasn’t our dream home, but this home had previously seemed so out of reach that I was ready to settle and allow it to be my dream home, thinking we might not ever do better than that anyway. But even my sub-par dream home was about to be lost. 

The Painful Journey of Accepting Our Loss

Asif and I cried together as we went through the journey of loss, packing and preparing to sell our beloved home, only 3 short years after moving in. Not to mention, I was 4 months pregnant at the time with a 6 year old, 4 year old, and 2 year old to care for. 

Thankfully the housing market was at a place where we could sell our home for more than we had bought it for, so we listed it, hoping to avoid foreclosure. After 5 long days of frantic, in-depth, non-stop cleaning so that people could come see the house every day (which is nearly impossible with 3 small children and 2 dogs making a mess behind you faster than you can clean it up!), someone made us an offer. It was $10,000 less than our asking price, which meant we would have to come up with as much on our own in order to sell it and pay all that we owed, but we knew that was the best we were going to get so we accepted. 

And then began the next heart-wrenching phase - trying to find a place to move to. We had no money, since we were going to have to pay every cent we had and even more, just to be able to get out from under the debt of the house. And, of course, we had horrible credit from falling behind on our mortgage payments. 

Will We Be Homeless?

Here we were, a family of 5, soon to be 6, with 2 dogs, about to be homeless. I threw out every idea I had of a decent living situation and narrowed down to 2 things I was really hoping for (I knew these were some “big asks”): 1) a place with an easily accessible washer and dryer; and 2) a place where I could let the dogs out into a yard. Yes, we decided to believe that somehow keeping our 2 dogs would be possible. Finally, our budget for rent was a mere $600 - $700! Nearly impossible to find anything at that price. I envisioned the worst - an unsafe, run-down apartment in a scary location. I accepted that I would have to somehow make the best of it.

However, I still tried to find other options and at one point my friend referred me to an apartment complex manager who was a friend of hers. I spoke to the lady telling her a little bit about our situation and asked her if she had any 2 bedroom apartments available. She then proceeded to tell me that it was illegal for her to rent a 2 bedroom apartment to our family, because the maximum occupancy allowed by law in a 2 bedroom apartment was 4 people. She said she could rent us a 3 bedroom, but that was way out of our price range. 

Upon hearing that, I felt yet again like I'd been punched in the chest. I had just found a way to resign myself to figuring out how to make a 2 bedroom apartment work with our family and just got told that even that wasn't an option. I broke down crying and prayed, asking God to bring us someone who would take a chance on us, who would risk renting to us even though we had no good recent history to convince someone with. I knew there was no hope for any “normal” option and I just cried out for grace and mercy to be shown to us. 

Grace Steps In

And here is where the next story begins:

THE NEXT DAY, Asif was at our photography studio with Andrea, who works for us as another photographer, and she somewhat sheepishly presented an offer. She said that she and her husband had been talking about us and our situation and they wanted to do something to help. They live in a split-level house and their lower-level (basement) was basically just storage space for them. They had thought about renting it out in the past but never went anywhere with it. 

Now they were willing to rent it to us, but it would lead to a very unique living situation. We would have our own half-bath downstairs, but have to share the bathtub/shower in their upstairs bathroom and we would have to share the kitchen. Now we knew Andrea and Zach as friends, but mostly as casual friends because of working together. We weren’t super close at that point and being willing to enter into this kind of extremely close collaboration and sharing was a very very brave thing for them to do. As soon as Asif told me about it, I felt my heart leap inside - this was IT! This was exactly what I had just cried out to God for! 

We went and looked at the space just to be sure we could make it work (I already knew at this point that I would make anything work!). Their house was out in the country, about 20 minutes from our studio, with a large yard. The lower level was basically 2 big rooms with a half-bath. Want to know the best part?!? My 3 BIG asks were fulfilled here - there was a door that led to the fenced-in area of their backyard where I could let our dogs out; the washer and dryer were in the basement and I was able to use them; AND they charged us $650 a month!! We had never told Andrea that we had those desires, only Asif and I knew what we were hoping for. We said yes to Andrea and Zach and proceeded to spend the next 2 years living there! There is so much that happened during those 2 years that I will write about later. But for now, here is how I came to understand what a “spacious place” is while I lived in this very tight space.

The Promise

In the weeks when we were getting ready to move, I was extremely exhausted - 5 months pregnant and working like crazy day and night to be able to move out of a house that I loved. I woke up most mornings feeling like I had been hit by a train. 

I clearly remember one such morning and, just a few steps after getting out of my bed, I collapsed on the bedroom floor and broke down. I sobbed and prayed to God. I was so tired and so hurt from this loss, I just needed hope, a promise, something to hold onto, to get me through this extremely hard time. I asked him for a promise that we would one day get our real dream house, which was to own a house on a few acres with some animals and a garden - the house I described in the first post. We called it our “farmhouse,” because it would be like a mini-farm to our family. It was what Asif and I had dreamed of years before and we had hoped that our first house would lead to our farmhouse. Instead we were losing our first house with no hope of anything better in our foreseeable future. So after I had stopped crying, I got up to start my day, holding my heart in an open posture, ready to receive this “promise,” however and whenever God would reveal it to me. 

A few days later, I was in the kitchen, probably cleaning, not thinking about much at all, when suddenly a thought popped into my brain, as if it was from God: “What if this time I want you to believe me for the farmhouse, NOT because I gave you a promise, but because of My nature?” Immediately I knew exactly what this meant - it meant that God, who is my loving creator and parent, was asking me to believe Him for the desire of my heart without a direct promise from Him, because I knew that He loved me so much that He wanted to give me the desires of my heart. Once again, I broke down (pretty sure I ugly-cried daily during those weeks!), but this time with gratitude and the overwhelming feeling of being loved simply because I am. Not because of anything I’ve done. Simply because I exist. I held onto that as more than enough to get me through all that was to come. 

Discovering My Spacious Place

So while we were living in the basement of our friend’s house, Asif and I were envisioning our farmhouse, believing for it, reminding ourselves that no matter how hard things were for us, this was in our future. At one point, when we especially needed encouragement, Asif came across the verse in 2 Samuel and shared it with me. I felt as though it was putting more words to God’s promise to me: “He brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me.” (2 Samuel 22:20 NIV) I knew these were going to be the exact words I would someday use when we finally got into our farmhouse. They were so encouraging and such a beautiful thought to envision saying in the future. 

One day I was thinking about this very verse when something hit me - I had been viewing this verse in light of my future, but the words were past tense! Spoken not for the future, but for right now because it had already happened - “He brought me out into a spacious place. . .” I had missed something so very obvious - God was actually trying to get the message to me that I ALREADY WAS IN MY SPACIOUS PLACE! It was truly a moment of enlightenment as I realized that our time living in this basement was actually a spacious place, not a literal spacious place, but rather a spacious place for my soul - a place where the busy-ness of our “connected” lives had come to a halt as we became disconnected from our previous communities; a place where the complications of juggling expenses that were over our heads was dissolved; a place where Asif and I had the mental and emotional space to sort through a lot of things, specifically our mindsets and our relationship with each other; a place where I was able to spend time working on myself; a very spacious place indeed.

This realization gave me a much-needed change in perspective that allowed me to really soak in all that our time there had for us. I reminded myself that this was temporary, that there would come a day when I would miss all this, that there is an opportunity available to me during this season to grow and learn like never before and I may not get a chance like this ever again. I suddenly wanted to “squeeze out” all that I could during this time. And for the most part, I believe we did just that.  

IMAGE CREDITS:

Brett Jordan - Unsplash

Anh Nguyen- Unsplash

Zohre Nemati - Unsplash

Fa Barboza - Unsplash

Hi there, my name is Nicki and I have the privilege of raising four beautiful children with my amazing husband, Asif. We are a family on a journey, in the process of getting from where we are to where we want to be. Our story is rich, filled with both high triumphs and deep dark pits. I have known that we will write about this adventure “someday,” when we have arrived at the place of our dreams, when we have achieved our goals, when we are finally “there.” 

BUT, as time goes on, I am realizing that the powerful part of our story is the struggle, the loss, the hopelessness that we have experienced and still are trudging through at times. I once heard that when we tell our own story, no matter how raw or painful it may be, we then get to decide the ending, because we have taken ownership of it. Not telling our story makes us the victim of someone else’s narrative and keeps us stuck. With that in mind, I am choosing to write now, knowing that as a result, I will get to choose the ending. So here goes. . . 

First, I want to welcome you into our beautiful home, which I am so grateful for. I really want you to feel like a guest in my home, so please imagine you’re here as I describe it: 

My Dream Home

We live on 8 acres of land in a beautiful modern farmhouse with an open floor plan, 5 bedrooms, and 3 bathrooms. The sunlight streams in through our huge windows and we are far enough away from our neighbors that I don’t even have to close the curtains at night. My mostly white kitchen is spacious, with plenty of counter and cupboard space (gorgeous marble counters, to be specific), two ovens that I frequently bake in, and a large fridge filled with healthy food. Together as a family, we care for a flourishing garden, adorable miniature goats, chickens, barn cats and 4 dogs. I love every season in our home. The summers are spent mostly outdoors - in the pool swimming, on the deck grilling and eating, and in the backyard exploring. The fall is full of yard work and playing in leaf piles, followed with campfires in the evenings. The winter is cozy as we cuddle up in our living room by the fireplace and enjoy looking at the beautiful white world outside. And spring is spent planting our garden and cleaning up the yard in anticipation of the summer. We thoroughly enjoy taking care of our home and it is a bright, peaceful and joyful place. 

What I just described here is very, very real in my mind. In my imagination, I experience every nook and cranny of this home: I feel the warm grass under my feet when I’m outside in the summer; I smell the baking of Christmas cookies in my convection oven in December; I hear the joyful sounds of my kids running around, playing freely; I taste the large meal I’ve prepared for our family and the extended family that has come for dinner; and I see the bright, open living space, filled with the furniture and colors that I love: a bit of mid-century modern, mixed with a dash of farmhouse style, sprinkled with turquoise, green and yellow accents. This is My Spacious Place. This is my home.

Where We Really Live

However, if I were to tell you about where I actually live right now, it is indeed quite far from this vision, this dream. . . no, this PROMISE of a home I just described. 

Right now, our family of 6 with our 2 large, high-energy dogs, lives in a tiny, second-story, 1 bedroom apartment with no yard. And in fact, the 1 bedroom doesn’t even have a door on it. Nope, we’ve hung a curtain in the doorway of the room where our 4 children sleep every night. We have no real beds in this apartment, the kids roll out sleeping bag-type pads every night (except for the 2-year-old who is still in a crib) and Asif and I pull out part of our handy Ikea couch to transform it into a “bed.” This room is our “living room” by day and “bedroom” by night. 

Our tiny kitchen has less than 3 feet of real counter space (about 1.5 feet on either side of the sink) that we supplement with more Ikea furniture: 2 mismatched wooden islands against the wall. We eat meals at our small, 15-year-old kitchen table (also from Ikea!) and share one bathroom and a shower. We don’t even have a bath tub for our young kids. 

We have a room that used to be some sort of “porch” or maybe a 3-season room at the front of the apartment. It has no heat, but we need every bit of space we can get so we use an electric heater to heat this room in the winter and we endure the heat in the summer. We call it the playroom - it’s where the toys are and it’s also where I homeschool our 3 school-aged children. Thankfully, we have a large attic space where we can store stuff and I actually keep a majority of toys up there, rotating them occasionally to keep it interesting for everyone.

The kids clothes are kept in yet another piece of Ikea furniture, a cube-shaped bookshelf unit. Their clothes are in the boxes that fit into the cubes and that shelf is in the “living room.” Asif’s and my clothes are in a “closet,” that is actually just a section of the bathroom that we installed a couple of bars in for hanging clothes from. 

Walking On Eggshells

Additionally, we live above 2 businesses - one is our own business, Asif’s photography studio, and the other is an architect’s office who has been there for over a decade. He had a very bad relationship with the previous apartment tenant who was a woman with her older daughter and several small “yippie” dogs. She was too loud for him. She, the single woman with a daughter who was in school 5 days a week, who was probably often working herself, was too loud. 

And now we live here - we, who have 4 kids under the age of 10 who are pretty much home ALL day. We, who have a 2-year-old who jumps instead of walks to get around. We, a family who is naturally loud when we’re happy and mad, of which both emotions are expressed dozens of times daily between the 6 of us. We, who don’t have several yippie dogs but rather 2 big dogs who love to wrestle in the living room, right above the architect’s office and bark at passing dogs. And to someone working downstairs, apparently even a normal footstep quakes in such a way that whomever is listening can’t help but tense up and anything beyond that makes one think the ceiling is going to collapse. 

This man has clients come to his place of business and here we are, where our every-day life is causing him to appear unprofessional. He has banged on the ceiling and yelled multiple times to get our attention, Asif and he have had several tense discussions, and ultimately we know that we need to do whatever it takes to keep everyone quiet. But that’s not easy. So we block off half of our already small apartment every weekday during the architect’s work hours to keep anyone from even walking over the main part of his office. It’s helped keep the peace so far, but we are certainly “walking on eggshells” every. single. weekday. 

What a contrast from the dream home I described at first. Quite the opposite pictures. But do you know what’s crazy?? In the midst of this one-bedroom apartment living situation, I actually find the same peace, joy and brightness that I envision in the promised home that is to come. And believe it or not, I have come to see this as my spacious place. 

And what exactly that means, is another post. 

IMAGE CREDITS:

Philipp Reiner - Unsplash

Josh Hemsley - Unsplash

Kaleb Tapp - Unsplash

Kaluci - Unsplash

Rex Pickar - Unsplash