yard sales, miracles, and mulberry bushes.

One week ago I went home to Ohio for what was (maybe) the best (and definitely) the most exhausting weekend of my life. 

I made the 7 hour drive and let out a deep breath when I pulled up to our house at 1’oclock in the morning. I knew it was going to be a jam packed trip—quick visits with friends, getting travel shots and malaria meds, and mostly: the rummage sale.

I got the idea to throw a rummage sale fundraiser from one of my missionary friends in the Dominican Republic. I thought it sounded like a pretty solid idea so I started just by cleaning out my own stuff. As I did, I began to realize how much I owned, and I began to find freedom in getting rid of it. So I started telling people about the rummage sale, and asking them to get rid of some of their stuff too. Before I knew it things started piling up in my living room.

I drive a small Honda civic and I honestly doubted the contents of that living room were going to fit into my car. But thanks to a friend with some Eagle Scout in his blood (thanks Baden Piland!), every single thing fit in perfectly like Tetris pieces. So home I headed along with two lamps, a vacuum, a night stand, an antique chair, two complete sets of dish ware, a mountain bike, a small ladder, a DVD player, a cooler, and about eleven trash bags of clothing.

And it didn’t stop there.

For the next two days people from my hometown dropped more and more things off. It was constant. At one point I just stepped back and laughed. I remembered that at the beginning, I had been afraid that we didn’t have enough stuff to even have a yard sale. And now it was as if items were breeding in the house. The Lord was providing. Immeasurably more.

There was so much to price I went to bed at 2am on Friday night. I prayed for strength for the next day, and was up at 5:30 back out there with my parents, my neighbor, and my friend Marilyn who all gave so much of their time and energy. I didn’t know if we actually would pull it off. But suddenly it was 7:30, the first customer pulled up, and we were ready.

The day prior it just rained. As we were starting out the day for the rummage sale, the morning darkness wasn’t fading. It was breezy and I saw dark clouds overhead. There was so much stuff in the driveway, it just couldn’t rain. It couldn’t. Up to this point I hadn’t been nervous about the weather because I had felt a constant assurance from the Lord that it was going to be fine. But what I saw with my eyes that morning was not congruent with “fine.” Yet somehow I still knew–God had it covered. That morning in an attempt to spend time with Jesus before things got crazy, I had opened my Bible randomly to Luke 17:6. 

Jesus tells his disciples this: “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you.”

I began praying against the dark clouds in faith that they would move. By noon, it was 73 degrees and sunny. I could not have asked for a more beautiful day.

I had been afraid no one would come. But people came. One man from my neighborhood that I’d never met before placed a hundred dollar bill in my hand as he left. As one woman checked out, I thanked her and told her the money was helping me serve as a missionary. I didn’t know it, but she was a believer. Her face lit up and she prayed over me right there in my garage. I can’t remember everything she said, but I remember she asked the Lord to show me favor.

At the very beginning I had set a goal for the rummage sale. I prayed the number one thousand, which still sounded like a bit of a stretch. We weren’t selling much furniture, or electronics, or “big” things. At the end of the day when we sat down with my mom to count the money, I’ll admit, my highest guess was $900. I still thought it would be awesome if we raised close to $1,000, but I doubted that we did. In my mind, my prayer still would have been answered if we got close to that number. $950. $975. $999. God would have pulled through for me with that bare minimum and I would have dropped to my knees in gratitude. But I knew I had prayed boldly for $1,000. So when my mom told me how much we had actually raised, I made her double count it. Sure enough, $1,182 and 70 cents—on day one. In total, from day two and day three: $1,530 and 70 cents.

The Lord had provided. Not the bare minimum, but INFINITELY more.

To me, it’s nothing short of miraculous. Jesus doesn’t need me to throw a yard sale. But this story isn’t mine, it’s His. And in the process of this all I got to connect with people in my hometown about God and share what He’s up to and who He is: a God with the ability to meet all of our needs. To give joy and abundant life in the process. And when necessary, to move a mulberry bush, and sometimes, a rain cloud or two.

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I would just like to say THANK YOU to every single person who had a hand in making the whole rummage sale possible. I never could have done this without so many people coming together. Thank you for cleaning out your closets, thank you parents, neighbors and friends for late nights and early mornings. Thank you teachers for handing flyers out at school. Thank you for coming. Thank you for giving. And–definitely–thank you for praying. Just thank you, a hundred times over!

“Glory belongs to God, whose power is at work in us. By this power he can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.” – Ephesians 3:20