Four Years Inside These Walls

I do this sometimes.

When life is moving too fast for me to really process what God is doing, I come over here and write.

And this week has felt like one of those weeks.

There are boxes everywhere. We bought a house. We're saying goodbye to the place we've called home for four years. My kids are excited. I'm excited. There are approximately 847 things I should probably be doing right now instead of sitting at my computer.

But I couldn't leave this apartment without writing this.

Because when I really stop and look around these rooms, I don't just see an apartment we're moving out of.

I see four years of our family's life.

Some of the sweetest parts. Some of the hardest parts. Things I haven't shared much about. Things God did here that I don't think I even understood while we were living through them.

And before we close this door for the last time, I want to remember.

So this one is a little more personal.

It feels a little like opening up a really big piece of my heart and letting you sit with me inside these walls for a minute.

Because four years ago, on August 14, 2022, we pulled into Fort Worth with a moving truck, a one-year-old, a preschooler, and absolutely no clue what the next four years would hold.

Dallas and I carried what felt like a thousand boxes up the stairs to our little seminary apartment in 100-degree Texas heat. We were sweaty, exhausted, probably questioning every possession we had ever purchased, and very aware that we had just moved our family halfway across the country.

We knew God had called us to Texas.

That was about all we knew.

We had left our family, our friends, our church, our yellow house in New Jersey, and so much of the life we had built. We came here believing in Jesus, wanting to serve Him, wanting to learn, wanting to do ministry.

I don't think I understood then just how much God was going to use these next four years to work on us.

And now, somehow, we're moving.

YALL.

We bought a house.

Even typing that still feels a little crazy.

But here's the part that really gets me.

We moved into this apartment on August 14, 2022.

We closed on our first Texas home on August 14, 2026.

Exactly four years.

To. The. Day.

I mean... come on.

We certainly didn't plan that. We couldn't have planned most of what has happened over these four years. But I can't look at those two dates sitting next to each other without getting emotional.

Honestly, from the moment we knew this house was really going to be ours, I was ready to go. Ready to pack the boxes, hand over the keys, and run straight into this next chapter.

I was SO excited for a backyard and a neighborhood, more room around our table, and to watch our kids make this new place their home. But the closer we've gotten to leaving, the more I've felt like I shouldn't rush out the door without looking around one more time.

Because goodness, a lot happened inside these walls.

We moved in with a one-year-old Bo who had barely learned to walk and a preschool Eloise. We're leaving with two big kids who will walk into school together this year.

There were seminary papers spread across our kitchen table and degrees earned. New jobs. New friendships. People who started as strangers and somehow became family. There were birthday parties and dinners and Christmas celebrations and bedtime prayers and worship songs and friends squeezed into an apartment that wasn't really big enough for everybody.

And somewhere in the middle of all of that, there were boxes.

So. Many. Boxes.

This is the apartment where WITH began.

A little idea God had placed on our hearts turned into supplies spread across our home, boxes stacked anywhere we could fit them, our kids helping us pack, and eventually those boxes turned into hundreds and hundreds of boxes in a warehouse, leaving our hands and showing up on doorsteps across the country.

There is so much good that happened here.

But if I'm going to tell the truth about these four years, there was also a lot of really, really hard here.

And I think that's why leaving this apartment has made me more emotional than I expected.

Not long after we arrived in Texas, Bo broke his leg. Then came seizure-like episodes that terrified us. I can still remember sitting at our table when he wouldn't wake up and the absolute panic of not knowing what was happening to our little boy.

We lost babies here.

There is a particular kind of crying out to God that happens when you're losing a baby you already loved and prayed for and there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop it. I wish I didn't know that kind of grief. I do.

Then there was the emergency appendectomy that turned into an infection throughout my abdomen and more surgeries. I remember one night being in so much pain that I was literally grasping the wall of this apartment, crying out to God to help me because I was scared. I remember thinking about my babies asleep nearby and just begging Him to let me stay with them.

Eloise missed New Jersey so so much. There were tears from a little girl who just wanted to go back to her yellow house. By first grade she had started her fifth school in three years, which still hurts my mom heart when I type it.

Dallas had the night when he couldn't breathe and we thought he might be having a heart attack. Instead, we discovered a serious problem with his lung that would require urgent surgery.

Then there was my major foot surgery and months of recovery. And, because apparently I like to keep things interesting, there was also the day I fell while that foot was still healing and crawled my way down this very narrow hallway. 

And there was ministry hurt here too. Some of the deepest we've experienced.

I don't need to tell every part of that story. There are people we will always love and relationships from those seasons for which I will always be grateful. Those are wounds I am still learning to surrender everyday.

All of that happened here.

And when I really stop and think about it, I think I know the word God taught our family inside this apartment.

Endure.

I've always believed in God.

I've trusted Jesus for most of my life.

But these four years taught me something different about faith.

They taught me what it means to choose to look up when everything in you wants to look down in despair.

What do you do when you don't understand what God is doing? When you're scared? When you're grieving? When your child is hurting? When your body hurts? When people hurt you? When you pray and the situation doesn't immediately change?

Do you still believe He is good?

Do you still trust Him?

Do you still worship?

There were times over these four years when those weren't theological questions anymore.

They were Tuesday-night-in-our-apartment questions.

And over and over, we learned to cry out to Jesus.

Not eloquent prayers. Not the kind you write down in a devotional.

Sometimes just, God, help us.

And He did.

Not always by immediately changing the circumstance. Not always by giving us the answer we wanted. But He was there.

Looking back, I also can't tell the story of these four years without acknowledging something we have become much more aware of along the way: spiritual warfare is real.

I can't look at every hard thing that happened to our family and tell you why God allowed it or where it came from. I can't, and I don't want to pretend I have answers God hasn't given me.

But Scripture tells us we have an enemy, and that enemy does not want families following Jesus. He doesn't want marriages strengthened, children discipled, God's Word opened in our homes, or God's people continuing to say yes when following Jesus gets hard.

There were plenty of moments when Dallas and I looked at each other and thought, oh my gosh. This is a lot.

Because it was.

I can't tell you every one of those circumstances was a spiritual attack. But I do know the enemy would have loved to use them to make fear win, turn hurt into bitterness, make us question God's goodness, or simply make us stop.

Instead, God kept teaching us to stay close to Jesus. To open His Word again. Pray again. Worship again. Forgive again. Trust again.

That's what endurance has come to mean to me. Not pretending something doesn't hurt or gritting your teeth until you get through it. It's continuing to turn toward Jesus in the middle of it and allowing Him to strengthen your faith.

And somewhere along the way, God strengthened our family's faith from the inside out.

He gave us professors who became mentors, friends who became family, and people who prayed with us, helped with our children, packed boxes and showed up. He gave us a new church that welcomed us when we were carrying more than most people knew, and a Sunday School class that somehow decided the mission of WITH belonged to them too. Some of them even got on a plane and flew to Florida to serve alongside us this summer.

I mean... who does that?

God has been so kind to us through His people.

And He gave us WITH.

That part gets me when I think about it now.

Because WITH stands for Worship in the Home.

And before God allowed us to send resources into thousands of other homes, He was teaching us what worship in the home actually looked like in ours.

Sometimes it looked like a devotional around the table. Sometimes it was music playing in the living room while we danced and sang. Sometimes it was a conversation with one of our kids.

And sometimes worship in our home looked like a scared mom holding onto a wall and crying, "Jesus, help me."

Family worship isn't about creating a perfect little spiritual moment with children who sit quietly and give all the right answers.

It's about building a home where Jesus is part of real life.

Where our children learn who we thank when life is good and who we run to when it isn't.

Where they see us open His Word, ask hard questions, pray when we're scared, celebrate His goodness, repent when we're wrong, and trust Him when we can't see what He's doing.

That's what I want for my family.

And it's what I want so badly for every family we serve through WITH.

Now, four years later, Fort Worth doesn't feel like the place we moved to anymore.

It feels like home.

And then God did something we genuinely didn't see coming: He gave us a house.

Buying a home wasn't our plan right now. We had made peace with that. We were grateful for this apartment and knew God had provided exactly what our family needed for this season.

And then, through circumstances and generosity we never could have orchestrated ourselves, He made a way.

Just up the road. Near our church, the people who have become our community, and the warehouse where WITH is growing.

A place where, for the first time in a long time, it feels like we get to plant some roots.

I am in awe. And grateful doesn't even feel like a big enough word.

Of course I'm excited about bedrooms and decorating and a backyard. If you know me, you know I have approximately 847 decorating ideas already, and let’s not even talk about the open tab count on my laptop.

But what I really keep thinking about is what will happen inside that house.

I want people around our table, kids running in and out, neighbors becoming friends, and our door always open to someone who needs a place to land.

I want our children to grow there. I want us to serve there. And more than anything, I want Jesus to be worshiped there.

Which is why, before we moved a single piece of furniture into that house, we did something that mattered a whole lot more to us than unpacking.

The Saturday before our move, friends and family came to our new home to pray.

We prayed over our children's rooms, our marriage, our table, our neighbors, and the people God will bring through our front door. We prayed over the ministry that might happen there and even the hard days that will inevitably come.

We prayed for God's protection over our family, that Satan would have no foothold there, and mostly, we gave the whole thing back to God before we ever really started calling it ours.

Because after these four years, I didn't want the first thing we did in our new home to be unpacking a box.

I wanted it to be worship.

This apartment taught me that a home isn't really about its square footage or what you put on the walls. It's about what happens inside of it. It taught me that I can keep my eyes fixed on the things that are seen, or the things that are more important, the unseen.

These walls held some of the hardest days of our lives, but they also so much good. Most of all, they held a family that looks very different from the one that carried boxes up those stairs four years ago.

God grew us here. He taught us to endure, to trust Him when we didn't understand, and to keep looking up.

And now we get to carry all of that with us into a new home.

So before we leave, I'm just really, really thankful. For these walls. For the people who walked through the door. For the good days and the hard ones. And for a God who was faithful through every bit of it.

Our prayer for the new home is pretty simple:

Jesus, this home is Yours.

Let our children know You here. Let people feel loved here. Let Your Word be opened here. Use our table, our rooms, our backyard, and our front door however You want.

And let there be lots and lots of worship in our home.