Transparent Christian Magazine

When my wife and I decided to have a ‘home-birth’ with our son Logan in 2000, we enrolled in a special birthing class, and the direction of my life changed forever. Our instructor was a Christian, and in this small class (3 other couples) we had 2 ordained ministers, a missionary/youth pastor and a theology student. This was before I knew Jesus on any type of personal level or asked God to ‘come into my life’…(That’s so cliché, but that’s what I did around 2000!). John, one of the ordained pastors in that class became a friend of mine. He would come and visit me at the office and offer prayer, and some spiritual direction, and I would give him business advice.

At that time, I was working for a startup technology company, trying to get rich by riding the dot com wave. I remember John telling me that if I did decide to really follow Jesus, God might take this job away from me (I was a 28 year old VP, and felt invincible most days.) “Heck Jason, he might take away the brand new SUV and you big house.” I told him that because I was the lead sales person month to month, that my job was as safe as my 4 bedroom, 3300 square feet dream home.

When the company went out of business a short year later, I was in a world of hurt financially. My wife and I had a new child, a big house we couldn’t afford, and the SUV that my pastor friend mentioned became a burden I couldn’t handle. I was paying the truck payment every other month and the second mortgage the subsequent months.…Apparently, Ford Motor Credit finally had enough, and one evening, they came and took the SUV out of my garage.

It was shortly after that, that Shelli and I sold our house and moved into a large rental townhouse that was significantly cheaper than the $1700 mortgage…But even $1150 a month was too much to handle.

We argued about money constantly. It was mostly due to my feelings of leadership guilt for letting us down with the last job situation. With some encouragement from our church we moved again, this time into my wife’s folk’s basement. It was about 600 square feet, and the accoutrements included sharing a bedroom with our two children. It was a blessing, but space was scarce.

We were able to bang out some debt, and in 90 days we moved to Hendersonville Tennessee on a weekend whim. We rented a 900 square foot brick ranch, but compared to our basement apartment, it felt like the Taj Mahal! In a year we bought our current 1,633 square foot ranch and it seemed huge in comparison. It has a killer deck, and we’re in walking distance to a Starbucks. (What more do you need?)

We feel very comfortable in this house. My family is closer, physically, emotionally and spiritually than we were in our big house, and although we don’t have any extra space, we have enough.

The point is, God stepped us down gently. Leaving our large home to move into the house we have now, might have been devestatingly painful. We needed to mature a bit before we ended up here. The journey to where we are, has given us a great appreciation of what we have in a home and, and more importantly, a family.

Sometimes God takes us out at the knees when we need to learn what’s really important, and sometimes He lets us down gently.

Love you,
Jason