It was exactly one year ago today: April 7th, 2016, about 4:00pm. Without warning, I taught the last piano lesson in our house - a house we had bought and lived in for seven years. "I think we have to leave our house," I had said earlier that day. When the lesson ended we collected a few things for staying overnight and walked out of our home. We never really went back.
I had mould poisoning. I had been sick for years but we didn't understand exactly why. When I had been unable to walk into any building without reacting to perfumes and chemicals we didn't really know why. When my body burned after every mouthful of food we didn't really understand why. When I was thin and weak and in bed for months we didn't really understand why, until finally a lightbulb turned on and we saw seven years of living in mould ridden houses. Black mould in a bedroom. Systemic mould through an entire building. CIRS - chronic inflammatory response syndrome that causes chemical sensitivity, sounded just like me, and is often caused by mould. My eyes were opened.
A few days earlier my wooden floors were cleaned - a vinegar spray - mycotoxins released into the air and the biggest immediate reaction I've ever had after walking into a building. Three days of joint pain, fatigue, falling, unable to control my body correctly. "We need to leave this house!"
So twelve months ago today we searched for somewhere to stay - surely someone had a spare room we could sleep in? A friend's kid was away and we could use their bedroom for one night. Okay that will work.
"I don't know if we will ever be able to go back to our house," I told my friend, "And if we can't we have to get rid of all our possessions too - you can't keep them." Mould is a tricky thing to deal with - a devastating illness.
The next day we found another house to stay at for three nights - a family had gone on holiday. I had a wakeful teething eight month old, an exhausted and stressed husband who was still trying to go to work every day because he couldn't get any time off, I was very sick and we were trying to correspond with mould experts and figure out what on earth we could do with our house - could we fix it? Could we ever go home? I wanted to believe we could but my gut feeling since the day we left was that we would never ever go back.
When the stay at our friend's house ended we wanted so badly to just go home so we did. We had nowhere else to go and we were homesick and exhausted. After half an hour back inside I knew I couldn't be in the house anymore. Ever. But we had nowhere else to go that night.
I slept on a fold up bed in the hallway with my head at the open front door. Then I moved to the car. My husband slept with our baby in the bedroom and brought him to the cold car in the middle of the night for feeds. I remember sitting in the car feeling totally abandoned by everyone including God because we had nowhere to go. How could it come to this? Having nowhere to sleep? Surely we couldn't end up so un-helped?
My husband says going back home for that single night helped him come to terms with the need to move out.
The next day a friend with a full house of people cleared a bedroom just for us to stay in. What beautiful generosity. I was so touched by their gift and their presence. But where would we go next? Within a day or two we were offered a house to house sit for two weeks. Brilliant. So we squished into a little front bedroom, my baby and I in one single bed and my husband in another. Now we were desperately looking for long term accommodation. It seemed sensible to rent a house but I strongly felt that God didn't want us to rent. Someone had mentioned a live-in missionary training college we could possibly stay at and I felt that yes, that was God's plan.
"We've discussed it at staff meeting and decided that yes you can stay in our accommodation for six weeks, we wouldn't normally say yes but we prayed and felt that it's right."
Wow God.
So we moved there. It was a little furnished two bedroom apartment with a bathroom and cooking facilities and a shared laundry. We would go over to share meals with the community. It was the same price as renting but for some reason that's where we were to be.
God had said there was a gem there for me. I had often idealised living in a community. Living there I learned that just because you are in proximity to people doesn't mean you want to be or are in relationship. I waited and waited for that promised moment but it never came. I think the gem was the lesson I learned - that in the end I was happy to be left alone in my own home.
We had been watching the house market, prepping to put our house up for sale, looking for something to buy in our city. Things weren't moving as quickly as we had hoped! We needed somewhere else to stay. It still felt wrong to look for a rental. One day a house came up - a house-sitting opportunity for two months. We took it.
It was the beginning of August. We had stayed in six houses since April. With about one week left house-sitting we now finally felt to start looking for a rental and found one immediately. We moved again.
The new house had clear messages of healing and restoration. Every one of my favourite flowers was in the garden - daffodils everywhere, orange tulips, white lilies. It was like God saying, "I am here, I am in this, your spring is still coming."
It was the first house that was actually mould free and within three days I felt like a new person.
Meanwhile we had sold our house, almost all our furniture, a lot of our other possessions and friends helped move our remaining mould contaminated things into a storage shed. The shed was pretty full. We had only kept things with us that could be washed thoroughly like clothes, bed sheets and metal or plastic things. The rest was in that shed.
Many of our friends and family thought we were over-reacting/pedantic/crazy. A few were very supportive.
For weeks and months my husband went through the long exhausting task of sorting everything - boxes of books, toys, kitchen ware, sentimental items, teaching supplies, Christmas decorations.. so many boxes. He would need to shower and change clothes every time he handled them. If I was around the dust from that house my vision would go a strange sort of fuzzy that I had never experienced before, my nose would go stuffy and my legs would go to jelly. It was bizarre.
There is so much more I could share - so many more stories to tell - but that is not the point of this post. We sold our house. I found somewhere to teach from temporarily. My husband kept going to work. We kept parenting. I felt amazing in our new mould free house after seven years of severe muscle fatigue. My husband's side project took off and brought in income. We started thinking maybe it was time to move out of the city. We felt it was time to finish up at our church. He could quit work. He could work from home. We decided to do it. I would have to quit work too. We waited on God to tell us where to move to. He wouldn't speak. We watched houses every day. Is this the house for us God? Where are we moving to God? What next God?! Nothing. No voice. No whisper.
I love planning. I love planning. I had to learn to stop. I love knowing what is about to happen. I love insight and discernment and words of knowledge. I had to stop. We had no idea what the plan was.
One day I heard a calling to Hobart. A few weeks later we decided it felt right.
It took three months to find a suitable house. The entire time I was still learning to stop wanting to know the future.
Last week we moved house into the most amazing rental properly in Hobart. This is clearly a new season - hopefully a resting season and a season of relationships and support. We need a rest.
God and I are good now. For reasons that have less to do with being forced from my home and more to do with what I will share another day. It was still extremely testing walking out of my home. I never got to walk inside to say a proper goodbye. I never got to spend a "last night" in the bedroom or teach a "last lesson" in the studio. There was no sentimental goodbye. Deep down I knew I would never come back but I didn't really know.
Life can be crazy.
A friend very dear to me posted yesterday that we never actually have control over the future - if we think we do it is a false sense of security. And that things can change any moment. We can only savour the moment we have now.
Things changed for us in a blink. One day we were doing normal life and a few days later we were essentially booted from our home almost as if it had burned down.
Reflecting on that today I thought, "Yes things can change in an instant but those changes aren't always bad." We think of an instant death or disaster and how one day life was lovely and the next it was gone. However what looked like disaster to us was always full of hope, even though it was incredibly difficult. We felt the hope brimming in every step.
We would not have sold our house anytime soon. We would not have left the city. My husband would probably not have quit work and gone full-time at his dream job. I would probably not have quit work. (What a relief that has been - I am so burned out.) We may not have left our church (more burn-out). We wouldn't have sold our piano and ended up with an amazing baby grand for the same price! I wouldn't have got rid of nearly 600 piano books - a great loss but new freedom to focus only on the best. We wouldn't have decluttered and thrown out so many - so many things! We wouldn't have found simplicity and freedom and newer better things. I wouldn't have got my health back.
What we had - our jobs, church, house, possessions etc. - they were okay for that season - but we were very ready for much more. We had to let go to get more. I really feel that we were pushed through that process a lot faster than we could have pushed ourselves and it has turned out to be such a blessing.
Somehow for the last year God was watching over it all. His hand was there.
I also love my new freedom to not want to know what is going to happen. I just want to be in God without our relationship being about knowing the future. It is actually less stressful to not know.
We don't need to know.
I had mould poisoning. I had been sick for years but we didn't understand exactly why. When I had been unable to walk into any building without reacting to perfumes and chemicals we didn't really know why. When my body burned after every mouthful of food we didn't really understand why. When I was thin and weak and in bed for months we didn't really understand why, until finally a lightbulb turned on and we saw seven years of living in mould ridden houses. Black mould in a bedroom. Systemic mould through an entire building. CIRS - chronic inflammatory response syndrome that causes chemical sensitivity, sounded just like me, and is often caused by mould. My eyes were opened.
A few days earlier my wooden floors were cleaned - a vinegar spray - mycotoxins released into the air and the biggest immediate reaction I've ever had after walking into a building. Three days of joint pain, fatigue, falling, unable to control my body correctly. "We need to leave this house!"
So twelve months ago today we searched for somewhere to stay - surely someone had a spare room we could sleep in? A friend's kid was away and we could use their bedroom for one night. Okay that will work.
"I don't know if we will ever be able to go back to our house," I told my friend, "And if we can't we have to get rid of all our possessions too - you can't keep them." Mould is a tricky thing to deal with - a devastating illness.
The next day we found another house to stay at for three nights - a family had gone on holiday. I had a wakeful teething eight month old, an exhausted and stressed husband who was still trying to go to work every day because he couldn't get any time off, I was very sick and we were trying to correspond with mould experts and figure out what on earth we could do with our house - could we fix it? Could we ever go home? I wanted to believe we could but my gut feeling since the day we left was that we would never ever go back.
When the stay at our friend's house ended we wanted so badly to just go home so we did. We had nowhere else to go and we were homesick and exhausted. After half an hour back inside I knew I couldn't be in the house anymore. Ever. But we had nowhere else to go that night.
I slept on a fold up bed in the hallway with my head at the open front door. Then I moved to the car. My husband slept with our baby in the bedroom and brought him to the cold car in the middle of the night for feeds. I remember sitting in the car feeling totally abandoned by everyone including God because we had nowhere to go. How could it come to this? Having nowhere to sleep? Surely we couldn't end up so un-helped?
My husband says going back home for that single night helped him come to terms with the need to move out.
The next day a friend with a full house of people cleared a bedroom just for us to stay in. What beautiful generosity. I was so touched by their gift and their presence. But where would we go next? Within a day or two we were offered a house to house sit for two weeks. Brilliant. So we squished into a little front bedroom, my baby and I in one single bed and my husband in another. Now we were desperately looking for long term accommodation. It seemed sensible to rent a house but I strongly felt that God didn't want us to rent. Someone had mentioned a live-in missionary training college we could possibly stay at and I felt that yes, that was God's plan.
"We've discussed it at staff meeting and decided that yes you can stay in our accommodation for six weeks, we wouldn't normally say yes but we prayed and felt that it's right."
Wow God.
So we moved there. It was a little furnished two bedroom apartment with a bathroom and cooking facilities and a shared laundry. We would go over to share meals with the community. It was the same price as renting but for some reason that's where we were to be.
God had said there was a gem there for me. I had often idealised living in a community. Living there I learned that just because you are in proximity to people doesn't mean you want to be or are in relationship. I waited and waited for that promised moment but it never came. I think the gem was the lesson I learned - that in the end I was happy to be left alone in my own home.
We had been watching the house market, prepping to put our house up for sale, looking for something to buy in our city. Things weren't moving as quickly as we had hoped! We needed somewhere else to stay. It still felt wrong to look for a rental. One day a house came up - a house-sitting opportunity for two months. We took it.
It was the beginning of August. We had stayed in six houses since April. With about one week left house-sitting we now finally felt to start looking for a rental and found one immediately. We moved again.
The new house had clear messages of healing and restoration. Every one of my favourite flowers was in the garden - daffodils everywhere, orange tulips, white lilies. It was like God saying, "I am here, I am in this, your spring is still coming."
It was the first house that was actually mould free and within three days I felt like a new person.
Meanwhile we had sold our house, almost all our furniture, a lot of our other possessions and friends helped move our remaining mould contaminated things into a storage shed. The shed was pretty full. We had only kept things with us that could be washed thoroughly like clothes, bed sheets and metal or plastic things. The rest was in that shed.
Many of our friends and family thought we were over-reacting/pedantic/crazy. A few were very supportive.
For weeks and months my husband went through the long exhausting task of sorting everything - boxes of books, toys, kitchen ware, sentimental items, teaching supplies, Christmas decorations.. so many boxes. He would need to shower and change clothes every time he handled them. If I was around the dust from that house my vision would go a strange sort of fuzzy that I had never experienced before, my nose would go stuffy and my legs would go to jelly. It was bizarre.
There is so much more I could share - so many more stories to tell - but that is not the point of this post. We sold our house. I found somewhere to teach from temporarily. My husband kept going to work. We kept parenting. I felt amazing in our new mould free house after seven years of severe muscle fatigue. My husband's side project took off and brought in income. We started thinking maybe it was time to move out of the city. We felt it was time to finish up at our church. He could quit work. He could work from home. We decided to do it. I would have to quit work too. We waited on God to tell us where to move to. He wouldn't speak. We watched houses every day. Is this the house for us God? Where are we moving to God? What next God?! Nothing. No voice. No whisper.
I love planning. I love planning. I had to learn to stop. I love knowing what is about to happen. I love insight and discernment and words of knowledge. I had to stop. We had no idea what the plan was.
One day I heard a calling to Hobart. A few weeks later we decided it felt right.
It took three months to find a suitable house. The entire time I was still learning to stop wanting to know the future.
Last week we moved house into the most amazing rental properly in Hobart. This is clearly a new season - hopefully a resting season and a season of relationships and support. We need a rest.
God and I are good now. For reasons that have less to do with being forced from my home and more to do with what I will share another day. It was still extremely testing walking out of my home. I never got to walk inside to say a proper goodbye. I never got to spend a "last night" in the bedroom or teach a "last lesson" in the studio. There was no sentimental goodbye. Deep down I knew I would never come back but I didn't really know.
Life can be crazy.
A friend very dear to me posted yesterday that we never actually have control over the future - if we think we do it is a false sense of security. And that things can change any moment. We can only savour the moment we have now.
Things changed for us in a blink. One day we were doing normal life and a few days later we were essentially booted from our home almost as if it had burned down.
Reflecting on that today I thought, "Yes things can change in an instant but those changes aren't always bad." We think of an instant death or disaster and how one day life was lovely and the next it was gone. However what looked like disaster to us was always full of hope, even though it was incredibly difficult. We felt the hope brimming in every step.
We would not have sold our house anytime soon. We would not have left the city. My husband would probably not have quit work and gone full-time at his dream job. I would probably not have quit work. (What a relief that has been - I am so burned out.) We may not have left our church (more burn-out). We wouldn't have sold our piano and ended up with an amazing baby grand for the same price! I wouldn't have got rid of nearly 600 piano books - a great loss but new freedom to focus only on the best. We wouldn't have decluttered and thrown out so many - so many things! We wouldn't have found simplicity and freedom and newer better things. I wouldn't have got my health back.
What we had - our jobs, church, house, possessions etc. - they were okay for that season - but we were very ready for much more. We had to let go to get more. I really feel that we were pushed through that process a lot faster than we could have pushed ourselves and it has turned out to be such a blessing.
Somehow for the last year God was watching over it all. His hand was there.
I also love my new freedom to not want to know what is going to happen. I just want to be in God without our relationship being about knowing the future. It is actually less stressful to not know.
We don't need to know.
