Downsizing?

Quality time on a computer is difficult to come by these days.

I was remembering back over the past few years of Kristine and my living arrangements; the places we have called home.

Seventeen years ago in the infancy of marriage we lived in a small cabin at the base of a ski hill in Alexandria, MN.  900 sq. ft., no garage and an entire ski hill all to ourselves. 5 months, rent – free.

Moved to a small house in Alex.  900 sq. ft. and no garage.  5 months – rent $450/mon

Moved to Kristine’s folks house while I went to school.  A bedroom, 144 sq. ft. and no garage. 2 years – rent – free (we helped take care of Kristine’s mother with MS)

Moved to Winona, MN in a 1981 two bedroom mobile home in a tornado magnet community. We bought it for $5000, nine years and three sons later we sold it for $5000. 800 sq. ft. and no garage. 9 years – owned the mobile home paid $300/mon in a lot rent.

Moved to “The Green House,” Winona, MN. The main floor of our second rental property; a triplex purchase.  2000 sq. ft. and a three car garage. 2 years – the rent from the upstairs two apartments paid the mortgage.

Moved to “The Farm House,” Winona, MN. A house on 700 acres at a dead end road, with a 5 acre yard and hundreds of deer.   3500 sq. ft. and a six car garage. 2 years – rent was my time remodeling the house.

God called us to plant a church in Seattle in the fall of 2006 so we began to pursue the call.

Moved to “The Chapel,” our first rental property – a four plex – carved out of a church building built in the late 1800s, which we purchase in 2001. We moved into Apart. #3 a two bedroom basement apartment. 1000 sq. ft. and no garage. One year – rent was covered by the income from the rest of the property’s income.

Currently  – - A popup camper in the front yard of the Colleys in Gig Harbor, WA. 150 sq. ft. and no garage. Two weeks so far – free.

God has stripped our six person family down to three suit cases filled with only clothes. All of our belongings are stuffed in a 20 x 20 storage unit in North Seattle, along with the belongings of seven others. Our boys have no toys or belongings of their own, we have worn the same outfits for days in a row, we are sharing beds, we are sharing the bathroom, kitchen and living space with our friends the Colleys (two adults and three boys), and part of our church planting team – two men and four women.

God is so good to us – we are so blessed. In every turn, in every way God has taken care of us, provided for us, and have taken us to a new level in our relationship with him.  Now we are looking forward to what he has in store for us. In each of these places we have called home we have grown and matured spiritually, even now. The key is focus. We can choose to focus on what we don’t have or we can choose to focus on what we have been given.  The later is the only way we will live content and be able to grow, mature and become the family God can fully use.

I told the boys a few days ago that we might find a couple of cardboard boxes under the Aurora Street bridge to live in next.  Hmmm.

~ by keithcarpenter on July 19, 2008.