Faith

I guess my toenails are going to have to wait one more night for new polish because I've worked this blog over in my head long enough. And who am I kidding? I could probably wait until next SUMMER to remove my chipped polish and nobody but Brian would notice... Him and my girlfriends from Texas (you know who you are)...

Beginning of Blog - Stardate 10-4-06:

Hebrews 11:1-2
"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good testimony."

For the past two years, we've been engaged in that walk of faith called Building a House. Here's how it started and how it has progressed, with some copious commentary (feel free to skim) about the substance that we've hoped for and the evidence of God's faithful hands at work, usually unseen but sometimes eerily right in front of our dim eyes.

November 2004:
In a burst of faith or foolishness depending on how you slice it, Brian and I made a somewhat romantic decision (for us, at least) to leave our very young children with our parents in California and fly up to Klamath Falls, Oregon to look at property. What's in Klamath Falls, Oregon, you ask? Not much save 40,000 folks, a new Wal-Mart and a Fred Meyer. Okay, so there is also a little Air National Guard fighter pilot training base called Kingsley Field. And Brian happens to be a fighter pilot. And there is world-class fishing. And a million dollar soccer complex for kids. Still not sure what was going through our minds at the time, but the mountain air must have really gone to our heads, because by the time we left K Falls, we were the proud owners of a half-acre parcel of land. Brian's longing to get the coveted instructor pilot job at Kingsley was still a far-off hope and we were living in FLORIDA at the time. Don't worry. The story gets even weirder.

One year and several trips to Kingsley later, we received the happy news that all of my mother's praying to get her grandchildren back to the West Coast had been answered affirmatively. Brian was hired at Kingsley for the following year. We'd be moving in September of 2006. Yippeee!!! I began putting in the requisite THOUSAND HOURS that a person must in order to be their own general contractor. I read many books, pored over house plans, sketched and measured. Not that I expected to honcho that job alone but Brian was busy with work and I figured I could fill him in on the details later. We were, Lord willing, going to build a house on that half acre at the Running Y. There was just this little problem of how we could come up with the money in a market dominated by California refugees. Oops! I meant "retirees."

Two months later and two days before Christmas, we received a call from Brian's future squadron commander: "Could we come to Kingsley in early spring instead of fall?" Two weeks later, our house in Florida was on the market. And then we waited. And prayed. And waited. And prayed. We could see the housing market in Panama City getting soft and softer. But then, by coincidences too strange to actually be coincidences, we found the IDEAL buyer for our house. We closed one day before we left town--with a few weeks to spare before hurricane season rolled around again.

We might have been exultant--money in our pockets, perfect timing, perfect buyer, perfect EVERYTHING; but we could only find the strength to be tremulously grateful. To this date we still have several good friends trying to sell houses in that market. Just as the saving grace of God is something that swoops down and picks us up from where we were--dangling above the chasm (thank Jonathan Edwards for that analogy), we realized that God's mercy in that dealing was completely unmerited. We were thrilled with what WAS but sobered by the thought of what might have been. And sobered yet again in the knowing that, for our friends who have not yet sold their homes, God's grace is manifested in those situations as well. Somehow, in a way that seems so impossible to us, He is working out our good and His glory in parallel lines.

When we finally rolled into Klamath Falls, we'd covered over 3000 miles and spent 27 days living out of our minivan, with some short jaunts to Acadiana, the Grand Canyon, Sedona, Hemet, and two hospitals. More on that in another post. We felt and looked and smelled like The Grapes of Wrath, I'm sure. I'd never been so glad to squeeze our six bodies into a 1300 square foot rental house as I was on May 23, 2006. Well, that's not exactly true, as I'd done a very similar thing several times before in Brian's military career. Still, you can never underestimate the thankfulness and joy that comes in trading the minivan for a genuine house!

As soon as our furniture was delivered and unpacked, Brian and I both hit the ground running on the home building project. We'd already been working with our architect for several weeks. We were reading home building books voraciously. We were talking to many friends who'd already done it. We were heeding the warnings, avoiding the pitfalls. In our minds, we had our ducks lined up in a neat row. Until the initial cost estimates came in. The Lord took all our ducks out in one shot! We acknowledged this setback as being from His hand, still spent two nights reeling under the shock, and then started looking prayerfully at houses in town. Overpriced houses in town. Houses in town that required another $100K just to fix the giant crack in the foundation, repair the drywall, and put a laundry room somewhere besides the sagging basement...

We set the bedraggled ducks back up again and started collecting bids from subcontractors. If you're not a Christian, you'd probably call us a pair of idiots at this particular impasse. But, as Christians, we believed we were doing what the Bible calls "walking by faith and not by sight." We didn't have any ideas about what God was meaning by His actions but we took the words of a great saint (still living) to heart. Henry Krabbendam says "If God opens the door, run through it as fast and hard as you can until He slams it in your face." Ouch! More on Henry at a later date.

Remember the initial cost estimates that killed all our ducks in one shot? Well, those initial estimates that had taken our breath away were in some cases HALF of the actual bids! All the ducks went down (again) in the slamming door. We extended what I began to think of as our "used housing search" to farmland on the outskirts of town. We began to consider those major remodeling projects and tried to talk ourselves into a place where we could agree with the Lord that HE knew what was best for the Bergerons.

And then our parents came to visit. They both took one look at our land and a few drives with us to see properties we'd considered in town. They both said the same thing: "Do what you have to do but you should build on this land." We weren't sure what they meant. Were we really supposed to go out and rob a bank in order to build this house? We literally gave up. There wasn't anything for us in town. But neither was there a way to bridge the financial gap between the cost of the house and the reality of our bank account. We knew that God had plans to "give us a hope and a future." I think that we really really believed that but there was no picture forming on the horizon as to what that future might be. You know that place in your heart where you finally surrender and admit that God is very VERY big and that you are very VERY little and know just about that same amount despite all your books and so-called education? We were there.

And then it happened. Brian went to Medford with his dad to try one last-ditch effort with a steel truss design and there he "happened" to meet Travis Hoppes. Brian and Rod went with Travis to his two most recent houses. They were very nice. Brian talked with the owner of one of the houses: "Travis is the best builder I've ever seen. He's honest as the day is long. He is as up front as a builder gets. He didn't come near to charging me what he should have for this house." Brian was sold. When I hear "that sound" in his voice, I know, after 12 years of marriage, to just hop on board because he's going to run through "that door" like a freight train.

A few weeks later we had worked up a budget with Travis. Travis had added BACK the in-floor radiant heat that we'd taken out of the old plans. He wanted to build with Insulated Concrete Forms to get a house that is so energy-efficient it can supposedly be heated by a good argument (it gets Alaska-style COLD here)! I was getting the finishes that I'd not even thought possible on our budget. All for a price far less than what we could build ourselves! When God gives you an amazing gift, well, you just want to talk about it...

Excavation began two weeks ago. The initial estimate to move all of those shocking (but beautiful) boulders was over $20,000. As it stands, to date, the excavator found far fewer rocks than he'd counted on and so our bill has not yet accrued to the point we'd feared. We subsist on small mercies right now. The Lord put those boulders down at the foundation of the world, with a few upheavals, of course, and He knew that we couldn't afford to have too many on our property. I guess. Substance/Evidence surfaces when God gives us eyes to see it and so we continue to hope and walk forward. It's called faith and I'm ashamed to say that I'm just now learning to walk in it.

I look at the excavated footprint of this house and it is by far the biggest house I've ever lived in and probably the biggest house I'll ever live in. I wonder every time I see it. Faith tells me that there is a reason for this house, though I still fail to see the big boulders of evidence that I'm looking for. "Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief. This whole project has been your timing, your people, your plan. If I'd had things my way, the schedule, people, and plans--even the size--would have been totally different; but I'd have had no peace. But now that it's YOUR timing, people, and plans, I feel so safe--despite the myriad decisions and financial responsibilities."

This week the footers are being formed and are scheduled to be poured on Friday. We believe that God will do mighty things on our land and in our hearts as He builds our house. We want you to see them too. Check back and we'll continue to keep you posted.