God has been generous to me again. I traveled abroad over Valentine’s Day weekend. While flying across the Atlantic to visit my dear friend in Prague, I kept chewing on this question, Why Prague? It had been on my mind for weeks, marinating, but I hadn’t been able to savor the wonder of this trip. That is, until I sat on an airplane for seven plus hours. I admit, it wasn’t a great question, but it got the thinking process going. What I found was yet another example of the Father’s love toward me. It was such a joy to taste and see the Lord’s goodness.
John Piper has said, “God is always doing ten thousand things in your life, and you may be aware of three of them.” The story of how we came to live in our farmhouse is one thing with ten thousand reasons. Why God brought us to this town when he did is another.
In 2014, while living in St. Joseph, but attending a church in Urbana, Eric and I began praying in two different directions. We had two conflicting desires on our hearts. First, because we were raising our firstborn daughter and had just welcomed our first niece, we began to see the treasure of raising kids close to family, but especially near their cousins. This was a childhood desire we each had growing up but was unfulfilled. I think we saw it as a gift we wanted to give our kids. So, we began to pray for that opportunity, but we really didn’t expect that to happen for another five or ten years.
Second, we lived about fifteen minutes away from our church. However, due to the expansive city it was nestled in, we really lived at least twenty to thirty minutes from most people within the church. We desired to live in our church community. So, we began to pray to that end. We even started looking at housing and a job change for Eric (he was driving about forty minutes in the opposite direction, to Danville). We thought it would be best if he worked closer to home and church, since city commutes take longer even with shorter distances.
Nothing surfaced. The housing market was limited, really nothing in our range. The job market was narrow, and Eric didn’t hear anything back after several applications in the Champaign-Urbana area. This desire was legitimate. It seemed like a God-honoring thing to do, so we were confused as to why nothing was opening up. That is, until Eric randomly decided to apply for a job about thirty minutes from Martinsville. Amazingly, he got it! It was better pay and better benefits, which was exactly what we needed because I left my teaching career to raise our daughter at home, and we were expecting our second child.
However, the drive was a solid, long hour. We both quickly grew weary of this, so we prayed more, not really sure what to do. Then, a house opened up. Some friends from Martinsville were planning to sell their house, a small, three-bedroom home, right on one of the main streets in town. It wasn’t exactly what we had in mind, or expected, but it did seem like an answer to prayer. We would be in the same town as our daughters’ cousin. And while we would have to transfer our membership, we would be living in our church community.
But there was one more thing, something we didn’t know we wanted until we realized we would be giving it up by leaving our church in Urbana. We wanted to belong to a discipleship group. We wanted to meet in a smaller group, in addition to the more formal, Sunday fellowship, ideally in someone’s home, where we could deeply learn and raise questions as to the mysteries and truth of God and the desires he has for his people. We wanted likeminded friends to grow alongside; to hold us accountable to the truth of God’s word and the role it plays in our lives.
December 1, 2014, we moved into our little house on York. A few days later, at a meal held before the church AWANA program began, we sat at a table with the local missionary. Ray and his wife Val, along with their three children, had recently returned from a year-long stay in Peru. Unexpectedly, but cheerfully, they joined a missionary organization and were considering their place in God’s global work. Now, they found themselves back home. Picking up where they left off. They were ready to begin hosting a discipleship group in their home, starting in January. Having learned about our desire, Ray invited us to join them. We committed on the spot, no questions asked. Turning to the woman walking behind him, he said,
“Hey Val! Eric and Beth are going to join our small group.” She smiled warmly.
“Hey, great! Can’t wait to get to know you guys more.”
And that’s how I met my dear friend, Val.
12 Stones Farmhouse 