Recently I discovered a Casting Crowns’ song titled Make Room. It isn’t a new song, just new to me, but it has had a huge impact on me as I hit “repeat” again and again during the Christmas season. The chorus begins, Is there room in your heart for God to write His story?

As I ponder my past, I recognize how close I came on several occasions to not making room in my heart for God to write His story. Like the day I began to suspect He was calling us to Japan. I had made a promise to God twenty years earlier that if He would make His will clear, I would do anything He asked me to do, go anywhere He asked me to go, or be anything He asked me to be, but that day, the temptation to pretend I didn’t hear what He was saying was the strongest I’ve ever faced.

Another phrase in the chorus says, You can come as you are, it may set you apart, When you make room in your heart and trade your dreams for His glory.

You see, our dream was to live happily ever after in our cozy home in Sandy Lake, relatively near our precious children and grandchildren. Some years earlier, I specifically remember lying in our bedroom in Sandy Lake thinking how happy we were and picturing us growing old there. Then the Holy Spirit whispered, We Have This Moment Today, the title of a Bill and Gloria Gaither song. Those words struck fear to my heart because I immediately jumped to the conclusion that God was going to take my husband, the most precious person on earth to me.

I banished the words from my mind, knowing from past experience that dwelling on that idea would take away my joy and wouldn’t change whatever plan God had. However, in retrospect, I realize the Holy Spirit was alerting me to the fact that all we had was that moment in my “happily ever after” scenario, because God had other plans for our future.  

I, and later Donn, deliberately traded our dreams of growing old in Sandy Lake for God’s dream for us to go to Japan, for His glory. Leaving our children and grandchildren was the hardest thing He ever asked of us. While our hearts’ desire was to serve the Lord, we’d always assumed we would serve Him in the United States. Never once had either of us felt called to be missionaries to a foreign country.

Ten years later I had another of those moments when, for a split second, I was tempted to pretend not to hear what God was saying. Our dream was to return to Sandy Lake, the town we loved, when our time in Japan was done. However, as our time there was coming to an end, we searched real estate agencies online but couldn’t find a home in Sandy Lake appropriate for our retirement years at a price we could afford.

As I searched the pages of Howard Hanna, I found a house that exceeded my mental list of what we needed in a retirement home—bedroom, bath, and laundry on the first floor―plus a garage and a family room at half the price we’d expected to pay. The problem was the house was in Greenville, a town I disliked and didn’t want to live in.

I almost passed on to another page because, once again, it didn’t fit my dream. But I hesitated long enough to remember that two of our kids and three of our grandkids lived in Greenville. That made the surrender easier and I reluctantly left the website open on the computer screen and told the Lord, “If Donn is excited about this house and contacts the realtor, I’ll assume this is what you want us to do.” He was and he did.

We returned to the U.S. on August 4, looked at the house in Greenville on August 5 (many of our kids and grandkids accompanied us), and closed on it by the end of August. As it turned out, almost everything God had for us to do was in Greenville. In addition, we could walk to the sporting events of our Greenville grandchildren from this house. We are still overcome with gratitude that God brought us here==to this house and to this town which we’ve learned to love.

Was it easy to make room in our hearts for God’s story? No, it wasn’t. We missed our children and our grandchildren terribly in Japan. When we returned from Japan, we missed living in Sandy Lake and felt displaced for awhile in Greenville. Still, when all is said and done, we’ve never regretted making room in our hearts for God to write His story, trading our dreams for His glory.

Father, your word tells us that Jesus died for all , that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died for them and was raised again.* Help us make room in our hearts for your story. Amen

*II Corinthians 5:15