As my husband and I traveled around the country, it was very difficult to find any work to try to earn our keep and cover our expenses. At the end of the year we made a stop in Florida, where we stayed with Mr. Lily’s mom for Christmas. However, I must say, with averages around 80 degrees during the day, it sort of felt like we were just pretending it was Christmas. While we were there, Mr. Lily was able to get a seasonal job and we tried to save a little for when we would get back on the road. 

             After the holidays we really felt like it was time to take a leap of faith and head to Texas. Over the course of the previous 6 months and all of the places we visited, there were several places that tugged out hearts and we weren’t sure if we would just be going to Texas for another visit. We just had to see what happened, because as far as we knew nothing was there for us, and we barely had the gas money to get there, let alone housing or food, or anything else.

             Two days before we left, Mr. Lily actually got job offer through a message on Xanga from an old friend working with the ministry we had been a part of together. We weren’t sure if he was joking, so we called him. This friend informed Mr. Lily of the position in question and said if he wanted it he would be first in line above several others already being interviewed. We were excited beyond belief! Even more excited as we began to learn what the job would entail – it is seriously the ultimate boy job, including a high and low ropes course and 3 paint-ball fields, among other things.

             We arrived in Texas on a Tuesday and stayed with a friend still living in the area while looking for a place to live. It turned out that on the coming Friday she had a roommate moving in, so we needed to look for somewhere soon. Mr. Lily was interviewing for the job, but we played the waiting game for a couple of weeks and at times it did not seem very promising. On our second day in town, we gathered at a friend’s house to watch “Ratatouille”, and as we were talking about our living situation, there was a knock at the door.

             It was a lady from a different ministry close by. She came by because she was visiting her friend across the road and felt like the Lord wanted her to come to this house and ask if we knew anyone from the ministry we are working with needed a roommate. Why she wouldn’t look within her own ministry is a mystery; she felt like the Lord wanted it to be someone from the one we are now a part of. We told her what we were just talking about, and long story short, we exchanged numbers on Wednesday and moved in on Friday (I’m not kidding!). Every detail about it was perfect. For instance, just a couple of weeks prior to our moving in, our roommate had acquired extra furniture to furnish the guest room. We didn’t have anything. We have been able to be here and use all that we need as we slowly acquire things of our own.

             What is interesting is at that time we didn’t even know if Mr. Lily would get the job. We were content with the fact that it may have been the hope of the job that opened the door for us to live here, but we were blown away when the Lord allowed Mr. Lily to get the job.

            Everything has certainly not been perfect or without some pretty hefty bumps in the road, but to us it has been a testimony of God’s faithfulness in leading us and providing for us, just like He said He would when we set out from Washington. Although I do sometimes feel like I am still on a journey of faith, I suppose we should always feel that way. I am so thankful that it wasn’t easy, because I know we learned so much more.

Washington is beyond a doubt a beautiful state, full of picturesque mountain ranges, lush green grass, and really good coffee that you never have to go far to get to. I poured my life savings into the espresso stands along the way to work each day…okay maybe on my days off, too…it was lovely.

I was, however, quite miserable. The Pacific Northwest is so unlike the places I had lived before. They say it is always raining there, but that is only partly true. It usually only rains for a little while each day, the rest of the time it is generally overcast and perhaps misting or foggy (okay, I’m exaggerating a little, the sun “comes out” sometimes for a week at a time several times a year).

I wanted to leave Washington almost the entire time I was there, but it was not until just over a year ago, coming up on our first anniversary, that my husband and I both felt the Lord was stirring our hearts to move from what had become our home. The more we prayed for direction we felt certain the Lord was preparing us to leave Washington, however, our destination became less clear. Even before we got married we had talked about and both wanted to move back to Texas, where we met, but nothing was there for us that we knew of. We felt like we needed to trust the Lord to lead us wherever it was He wanted us to be. Maybe the Lord was just using the hope of Texas to get us moving. We only knew we had to trust.

 Surprising, overall people were supportive of our decision to leave. Honestly, it was not the blatant “What are you thinking?!” responses that even bothered me, it was those who seemed to not take us very seriously. We knew it was that Lord calling us to do this, but even several authority figures in our lives repeatedly said things like “Well, nows the time to do it, while you’re young…” emphasizing words like fun and adventure…I don’t know what you’re thinking right now, but I can tell you right now that not very many women have this huge desire to be homeless and have little but a modest suitcase, no certainty of income or a for sure destination if we could even afford to get there. It’s fun and adventurous for a time, but I was pretty scared.

 With just enough money to pay any remaining bills we had before we left, we were left with hardly anything to travel on. I was sort of panicking. Yet every time we tried to save money, something completely random would come up and we’d be back where we started. Strangely, our hearts confirmed we were still to do this trip, but it had to be by faith.

 The night we shared with our church what we were preparing to do, a girl was having a fundraiser for her own mission trip. At the end of the night she felt led to give us a portion of what she had raised that night. We were so blessed and surprised, ready to put it into savings for our trip. Unbeknownst to us, we had miscalculated something in our bank account and that evening something went through that we weren’t expecting. What was given to us almost exactly equaled what had overdrawn and the overdraft fee. To us it was a reminder we couldn’t do this by ourselves, and God would take care of each of our needs at the perfect time.

 We spent our last two months in Washington weeding through our stuff, deciding what to sell or give away and what would fit in our car and was worth keeping.  I laugh at myself now because I had done this just over a year before when I moved from NC to Washington, a car full of almost nothing I have now. It’s amazing to me what I thought was important at that time. It just goes to show that things are just things...

 Anyway, we said goodbye to our home, family and friends, our car loaded up to the brim and bottom heavy. We celebrated early and actually left Washington on our anniversary date. We planned to travel around and visit friends and family around the US for a couple weeks, maybe a month if need be…we even had a route we had planned to take, but well…it didn’t quite go as planned…