May 17th...

"But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus." Philippians 4:19


I love May 17th. I have a list of reasons why.

It was my mom's birthday.

It is the day I graduated from high school.

It is the day I took my finale in mother/child nursing.

It is the day my son gave me an appendectomy for mother's day.

But mostly it is because of the House of Grace.


In 1999, my new friend Amy and I went to a Tupperware type of party. As we sat chatting with the other woman about houses and decorating, Amy and I were the only two apartment dwellers. We both wanted real homes. Sigh.

At some point Amy said something about buying a house for $100.00 down...all I could think was that payday was coming and that was a house I could afford!

I told John about it and he was not all that impressed. I had been known to chase down a late night infomercial or two so he didn't put a lot of stock into my latest idea.

In a matter of days, Amy called. While she and her husband had searched for a couple of years in this area, they had never found one of these houses. But then one showed up...they could have jumped on it, but they bounced it over to us. They figured we had three kids in a tiny apartment and they were still with just one at that point....

I drove over to the address they had given us and it was in fact a house. Liz had been praying for a tiny, little, pink house...and sure enough, God answered her prayers.

After weeks and weeks of phone calls and paper work we were ready with a closing date: May 17, 1999.
When I was told the date, I cried. It was like my Abba gave me a nod from Heaven that we were going to be home soon.
The way the closing worked out should have given me a heads up about how crazy our lives would be in that house. There was no room in the court house, so we signed our lives away standing up in the back of the DMV...and the lawyers kept shaking there heads and we just kept laughing at the ridiculousness of it all!
When it was all over, John carried me over the threshold into our new lives...burst pipes, stained carpets, an empty keg refrigerator and all!

Every year on May 17th we had a House of Grace birthday party. We would decorate it with banners outside, wear fancy dinner clothes and have every one's favorite dinner: hot dogs. One year, I went to answer the door in an old bridesmaid gown that was red velvet, in May...yeah, that neighbor didn't ring the bell again!

I brought babies home to that house and said good-bye to my dad from it too.

I had a tug of war, love hate relationship with that house and still do. Did I mention it was very little? We had seven people living in that place and storage was not easy to come by.

...and when we had to move, it broke our hearts.

Since we still owned the house after we moved, we needed a tenant. God provided one. She had three children and no where else to go. Money was tight for her so a local furniture store donated beds and a couch and friends from church donated every thing else.

See why we call it the House of Grace? Caity coined that phrase about the house. Grace means undeserved favor. That house was undeserved favor to our family and the next family. I love how practical His favor has been on us. Yes, we could call it the House of Practical Grace. He saw our need and filled it with abundance.

The family in there now is moving on (we think. They have not signed the new lease) so I have had moments of panic...and then I remember it's His house. Always has been. Instead of being in panic mode, I've decided to rest in the undeserved history of favor God has always shown us...we have a long history to pull on.

By the way, Amy and her husband and their two boys have the most fantastic home now. They built it themselves. I dropped by the other night to pick something up and I gotta tell ya', it blows away any house that I know of. Grace seems to spread around rather nicely!

So far on this May 17th my oldest, Liz, got out of bed on her own this morning...looks like the miracles are going to continue on this date for the Schlusser clan after all!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQYNM6SjD_o

This song makes me think of our girls and that old house of ours.