Peekaboo God

Peekaboo God.... I don't know how many times this phrase comes to mind for me. God is a Peekaboo God. And what I mean by that is he plays with us sometimes, not in a cat and mouse way, but in the playful and loving way a parent interacts with a child. That's what it feels like to me anyway. He shows his face, then quickly hides it, a moment of glory, then he's gone... A sunbreak on a rainy day, the unexpected four-leaf clover found just in the moment you're needing encouragement, a rabbit trail of answered prayers that are sometimes obvious, sometimes hidden. Like Hansel's bread crumbs, he says, "Follow me... Here. Now here. Now just over that log. Now down this path." He plays. And we follow step by step looking for delight and his face to lead us. Are you tracking me? Let me explain further.

We recently fell in love with a house out in Issaquah that got us so excited it kicked us into gear to get our own house fixed up, cleaned up, and on the market to sell, something we've been saying for many years we were going to do. We had a lot of projects sitting overdue, so it took us a couple of months to get it ready to list, and I spent way too much time along the way checking the MLS listing for the house in Issaquah we wanted. Eventually, I felt God gently leaning on me to stop checking it (and rest). At first, I wondered if it was just me or really him, then I felt it more strongly as time went on. I told Jeff, too, so we kept preparing our place and let the Issaquah listing go to the back burner. "Oh, great!" I thought. "This surely means that the house we love is sold and off the market, and God just knows that if we knew it, we'd lose steam and quickly abandon all our preparations to sell. But maybe he wants us to sell anyway, and this is how he entices us to do it." Who knows what it was? But one of the biggest things we were praying along the way was for clear direction (still are), so we decided to be obedient to what he'd led us to so far, obedient to prepare our home to be sold.

It was a Thursday that we got our own house (finally) on the market, so Jeff came home that night, and we sat down to the computer, hand in hand, much like children, waiting excited and a little anxious to check the listing on the Issaquah place. Peering through half-squinted eyes, we pulled up the MLS listing for the house we'd fallen in love with. Gone. Off the market. But not sold, we found out. The listing had expired and had been taken off the market one day (one day!) before we put our house on the market. Crazy! God is leading... "Follow me." (peekaboo) Well, long story short, Jeff stops by the house the following Tuesday to see what the scoop is. "Yep. Delisted," their teenage son tells him, "Contract was up with the realtor." ("Great!" Jeff thinks.) But catch this... the house had already been sold on Sunday, three days after we listed. (And God's face disappears.) It had nothing to do with them de-listing the Wednesday before, but someone came in and scooped it in the very same weekend we listed our house. While we were a little heartbroken at losing what we were hoping was our next home, it was hard not to smile on some level because our prayers were answered: God was leading clearly, and crumb by crumb leading us only as far as the next crumb can be seen. (peekaboo) I mean, what are the odds that Wednesday they would de-list, Thursday we would list, and Sunday they would sell? Crazy, right?

So as a result of falling in love with that place, we stumbled upon another great little house near there that still might be an option for us. Maybe that's why God took us to the first one, who knows? If we bought it, we'd virtually be staring across the yard right at the first house we found (for less money). It also started us looking at a whole different kind of home we would have probably never looked at if we hadn't fallen in love with that place in Issaquah. Since then, we've also found and lost a really great place in Woodinville, too, even more perfect than that one. (This one caused me a few tears.) But again, it felt divinely led that we would find it, fall in love with it, and lose it. "Keep following," it seems like he says. That second home, the one in Woodinville was scooped up the same week we found it, and they hadn't had an official offer in 3 years on and off the market. Again, I look at it and think it's God's clear leading. What are the odds?

Playing Peekaboo with God through this whole moving season has been interesting,  no doubt, and sometimes challenging. It will be interesting to see how it all turns out. The weak side of me wants an answer, and I want it now. Are we moving? Are we selling? Is the next house I fall in love with the one we're destined to move into? Just tell me clearly and tell me everything. But the real me would rather do it this way, delightedly playing games with God as he entices us and teaches us along the way. Then one day I suddenly remembered the educational purpose of playing Peekaboo with an infant: object permanence. All children's play teaches them something of the world around them, and Peekaboo is a game meant to teach object permanence - the concept that when mommy or daddy leaves the room, they still exist out of sight. They don't just vanish into nothingness. Wow. Truly... wow. So each time God's face appears then vanishes and appears again, I learn just a little more about faith, the spiritual version of object permanence, and my faith grows. Each time I become more and more sure that Daddy still exists in the other room well after our fun-loving game of Peekaboo is long over and he's gone.

Comments

[Jill Jenkins]

How beautiful. Reading this gave me a clearer perspective on some things in our life.