“Packing the Big Stuff”

For four years, my husband, our five children, and I have called a camper home. Tight walls, closer hearts, and a quiet ache for more. One day we decided, it was time. Time to start believing God for a home. Me, a barely working hairdresser trying to balance motherhood and calling, and my husband, a hard-working man who carries the weight of our family on his shoulders. We didn’t meet the “criteria” the world says you need, but somehow we were approved for a little.. Just enough to hope.

One day while driving down a road I rarely take, I saw a house that stopped me. It wasn’t just pretty, it pulled at my spirit. I told my husband, and he was immediately turned off by it. But something in me knew. I looked it up later and fell even more in love, even though it was far outside our range. Before I even knew the address, I had been dreaming of homes and this one looked somewhat similar to the house from my dreams. For the first time in my life, I felt what home could mean. Then my husband told me, “That’s my boss’s house.”

That’s when the prayers began. I started stopping by two or three times a week, praying over that house. I declared, “Just as this roof is red, so is the blood of Jesus that covers it.” I walked around it, spoke Scripture over it, and anointed it in faith. Eventually, it was offered to us at a decent price, still out of our range, but not out of God’s reach.

Because this isn’t about numbers,  it’s about God’s math. And He doesn’t add like we do.

So, I started packing. Little things, things that could leave the camper without being missed. And as I loaded a few small boxes into my car, I said, “Well God, it’s not much, but at least I packed something.”

That’s when I heard it.

“When you start packing the big stuff, then I’ll move.”

It stopped me. My breath caught because I knew! He wasn’t talking about the boxes. He was talking about the heart.

The “big stuff” wasn’t furniture or clothes, it was my family. My husband. My children. I had been praying over a house but not over the home God was trying to build within us.

I realized my prayers were full of promises for walls and windows, but God wanted me to start packing humility and repentance. To unpack the bitterness, the frustration, the silent tension that’s been sitting between us.

I called my husband and asked, “Where is your heart?” Because while I’ve been praying for open doors, he’s been quietly wrestling with hurt. With the ache of strained relationships with our children, with the weight of trying to lead when he feels unseen. I’ve been frustrated at what looked like his lack of faith, forgetting that faith can look different when someone’s still healing.

But today, I understood, that before we move into anything new, we have to move through the old. Before we carry boxes into that house, we have to carry each other in prayer. Before we cross that threshold, we must cross the gap that’s grown between us.

The Word says, “Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain” (Psalm 127:1). I don’t want walls God didn’t raise or rooms His presence doesn’t fill.

So, today I started packing the “big stuff” forgiveness, humility, repentance, grace, and the faith to believe that what God joins, He also restores. I’m packing love, even when it feels heavy. I’m packing prayer, even when the boxes of life feel cluttered. I’m packing truth, even when it hurts to face.

Because the move God is making in our lives isn’t just about a house.

It is about a home built on His presence.

And this time, I’m not just packing boxes.

I’m packing belief.

I’m packing surrender.

And I’m making room, for God to move.