Fruit Inspection

So I’ve been thinking a lot today about the year 2007. What was my favorite thing? My funniest moment? What happened that was sad? Who are my new friends? Who are the friends that moved away this summer? Did I maintain a healthy lifestyle? How much have my children grown? How much have I grown??? And what are in the plans for 2008?

Everything that kept entering my mind brought me back to the biggest influence of my life which happened to take place this past year. The media calls it “the mortgage crisis”. Politicians hesitate to call it “a recession”. Standard and Poore said the decline in single family homes hit a record low in the 3rd quarter of 2007 and chief economists are saying that it will be 2009 before the market is considered “in recovery”.

Home sales have not had a decline like this in 37 years. That was the year before I was born. It’s never been this bad in my lifetime.

In the 6 short years my husband and I have been homebuilders we went from the 2 of us selling 3 houses the first year, to 20+ employees and the title “Fastest Growing Homebuilder” in the country for 2005. Last fall we still employed 22 people and had projections of selling over 120 homes in 2007.

Jeremy opened a consulting company due to the number of phone calls he received from other home builders on how he was achieving such quick success. He had a book deal. He even created software that would help others to implement his techniques in their offices. It was life in the fast lane and we were enjoying it to the fullest.

Big house. Fancy cars. Boat. Limousine. Nice vacations. It’s the American dream, right?

If there is one thing I learned in 2007, it is that we should never loose focus on that which Christ has in store for us. As Christians, we had let worldly values influence our lives and disguised them as “providing for our family”. We had rationalized working 6 days a week, 10-12 hours a day because it would guarantee “early retirement” and then we could spend more time together as a family. We took separate family vacations in 2006 because the kids and I wanted to spend a week at the beach and Jeremy wanted to go to Las Vegas, and well, frankly we had the money, so why not just make everybody happy?

I began to feel God tugging on my heart about our lifestyle during the summer of ’06. As I began praying about it, I realized we were not the family He had created us to be. I tried to talk to Jeremy about it, but whenever I mentioned how much he was working, he felt like I was not appreciating the things he was providing for us. If I asked him for more time on the weekends, he became frustrated because work was so stressful, he felt he needed downtime to relax, usually on the lake or golf course. If I questioned our spending habits, especially in relation to God’s plan, he would remind me that we tithe and we also provide our community with many construction related projects free of charge.

All of this was true and I didn’t know how else to convince him otherwise. So I turned to the Lord. I can still remember that summer day in 2006. The kids were napping and I went outside to the back deck. I started to cry. Partly because I was sorry for my part in the sin, and partly because I was at a loss for what to say to Jeremy about it. I began praying out loud, looking up to Heaven. “Lord”, I said, “I know we’ve been wrong. We didn’t mean to be and I thank you for speaking to my heart about it. I’ve tried to talk to Jeremy but I don’t know what else to say. Please speak to him Lord. Help us to be on the same page about this. And Lord, if he refuses to listen, I pray with all my heart and soul that you would do something to get his attention. Even if it means you have to take away from us everything that we have. Amen.”

Well, ya know that saying “be careful what you wish for”? I’d say that I should have been more careful but in reality I really meant what I prayed that day. To me it was more important for Jeremy and I to be right before God than to hang on to all the things we had acquired.

Early on in ’07 we knew we were headed down a long and tiring road. Jeremy immediately got on his knees and has been there ever since. He’s had to let go of more than half of our staff, which is something that hurts him more than anything else in business. Many of our employees we even held onto months longer than we should have, just in hopes that things would turn around.

He’s been humbled by our bankers in particular, who were our “best buds” when things were really cookin’. A year ago they would do anything we asked, but now if we needed to borrow 10 bucks for lunch they’d laugh in our faces, even though we have never, ever been late on anything that due to them.

He’s faced criticism by subcontractors who are angry that we have taken on many of the homebuilding tasks ourselves in an effort to keep our own people employed. Unfortunately it’s left the subs themselves without work. I only wish they knew how much it rips at Jeremy’s heart to make decisions like that.

He worries a lot about the employees we have left. Christmas bonuses this year were not at all what he would have liked them to be. We used to take our employees on cruises and give them generous pay raises. Now he wonders if his “thank you” at the end of the week will be enough to keep them happy during these hard times.

And of course he has the never ending stress of paying bills each month with home sales at record lows. There is no money coming in, yet we have lots of money going out.

I think the biggest question I’ve heard Jeremy ask of the Lord is not why, but why still? Once he was convicted of how he was spending his time and money, he repented and waited for God to fix it. Then month after month after agonizing month went by. “Lord, why am I still in this mess???”

Only God knows for sure how long we will be in it, and only He knows if we will come out of it with our business in tact or if we will indeed loose everything we have trying to fight to keep it alive. The only things that we can do is pray for guidance, wisdom, and discernment in the decisions we have to make, and then have faith that whatever happens in the end, is all for the glory of God.

I’m proud of Jeremy for how he’s lead his family and his office during 2007. I’m proud of his hard work and determination. I’m prouder still when I hear him tell someone that it’s all been worth it. That the lessons he’s been taught about where his priorities belong are invaluable to him and if he had to go through it all over again, he most certainly would. He has truly become a man of God during this past year and I can’t wait until we get our heads above water again, just to get a glimpse of all the works that the Lord has in store for us. Hallelujah!!!