Tags
emotional healing, faith, God's timing, healing from divorce, Holy Spirit, Mercy of God, Prayer, Timing of God, Transitions, Will of God
My Dunwoody home that refused to sell.
This past week, I worked with a friend in the process of retiring from a successful business career. He has had a tough year; loss of close friends, health issues – the kind of year that makes a person take a careful inventory of what is truly meaningful in life. With a renewed desire to squeeze the juice from the fruit of many years of a daily work grind plus the impact of raising a large family, he set out to transfer a thriving business to his son through a carefully planned retirement sale. Quickly, it became apparent that this transfer would turn into several additional months of unanticipated effort. I felt sure it was disappointing. Driving home, I was reminded of a lengthy Holy Spirit Boot Camp session – one for which I never volunteered.
In the swirl of the ominous Y2K year (2000), I lived in a neighborhood in Dunwoody, GA a suburb of Atlanta. I made the gut-wrenching decision to sell my home, a decision I came to only after a devastating previous 18 months filled with the hardest choices involving the most important aspects of life. After dutifully researching and interviewing a number of local real estate agents, I landed on one that was an area Top Producer. We readied the house for market and I, with great anticipation, gave the OK to release the information into MLS. All we heard back was …….. well, not much. It was one of the most difficult decisions, even well past a year to even get to this point. By the time I was ready to sell – I wanted it gone….. like in the very same week. That’s not what happened.
For no reason any professional could pinpoint, the home sat on the market for weeks, into months I changed real estate agent and still nothing. NOTHING! BRASS HEAVENS LEVEL OF NOTHING. The market was good, the house needed abit of lipstick and a pair of earrings but certainly not surgery! My disappointment slipped into a depression, and a deep one, as I had truly believed God was going to make a way for me to return home to an adjacent state following a difficult separation, and subsequent divorce. Had I misheard God? Was the desire to go home not enough for Him to even help me?
By January of the following year, I was inconsolable. The holidays for a newly single person could (and probably has) put many into the nuthouse. Somehow during this, I learned of a one-day seminar at a nearby Dunwoody church that caught my attention, so I decided to sign up. Driving to the church, I wondered if I was wasting my time, but time was what I had plenty of during that season. I nervously walked in and sat down and looked around the small sanctuary, almost embarrassed that I had decided to go – I knew no one. At some point I turned to the girls to my right and introduced myself. They looked like me and seemed to have been through similar circumstances. We quickly struck up a conversation and then the speaker started talking. Pat delivered a powerful message that was straight from the Holy Spirit to my heart. This had been a God ordained set up and I had walked right into His trap and in His perfect timing.
Following Pat’s anointed presentation, I approached the platform, and tearfully asked if she would help me. Pat was a highly trained counselor, along with her husband Mike that actually specialized in precisely what I needed – like exactly to the “T”. She consented to see me, and in the beginning, we met twice per week. She asked if I would consider enrolling into a program that offered deep emotional healing specifically designed for people that had experienced similar damaging circumstances. I agreed to enroll into the program which would take a year. This would mean while attending that I would have to take my home off the market and find part time employment. This felt extremely counterintuitive as I believed that God had released me from living in Atlanta, but I could not move forward without selling the house. I was stuck – or at least thought that I was stuck, spinning in place and in a place that I was dizzyingly desperate to depart. Nonetheless, I consented.
It would be impossible to enumerate every success that God accomplished for me through this program – there were simply too merciful many. The surgical – level emotional healing prayers of those counselors re-arranged my soul even up from the cellular level. My foggy, toxic mind that was full of torment and unforgiveness became clear as if fresh mountain air had whistled through my traumatized noggin. A childhood marked by difficulty had thrown me into adulthood seeking performance-based approval. This was finally exposed for what it was as well. Life previously viewed from fractured lenses that had caused me to make poor choices were now becoming more like “Progressives” – clear and in focus both close up and far away. Going from fractured to Progressives proved to be a process, but life felt much lighter after several months of travel down this focused healing journey. For these and a number of reasons, re-entry back to my hometown could have never been a success, or even possible for any length, had these issues and more not been forced to the surface to be healed by Jesus.
As with all things the program concluded and the final night was one of great love, hearty laughter, renewed hope and a wholeness that I had never believed possible. This entire transformational experience was only made possible because my house refused to sell. Two days following the conclusion of the program, I grabbed a magic marker, placed my phone number on a red and white Home Depot For Sale sign and drove the sign into the front yard. The following day, a young couple pulled up in front and wrote down my phone number. They called. They walked thru. They purchased – all in the perfect timing of God.
I praise God for His wisdom, His grace, His mercy and His impeccable timing. There are seasons when God wants to do deep work in, for and through us. Always thoroughly pray regarding crucial decisions but yield to His timing then watch carefully what He will begin to do – in the meantime.
Tracy Gatewood
Sacred Ramblings
In the Meantime
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