You’re Gonna Be A Mom 

I answered the phone and heard, “You’re gonna be a mom!”

It was the weirdest call I had received in a while.

At the risk of over sharing, it is not possible for me to be a mom in the traditional sense at my current life situation, so you can imagine I was confused.

It was my friend Rachel, one of the 13 young women who have lived with me in my house over the last four years. 

She had an amazing story to tell!

Rachel had moved away from Minneapolis a couple years earlier to head to Williston, ND. There the “oil boom” had made it possible for her to work hard as a waitress, live in her cousin’s basement all with the goal to pay off all her student loans by the time she turned 25. 

Living in my house in Northeast Minneapolis is a unique situation, yet at the same time, we are just living our lives in a way anyone could in their neighborhood. Perhaps with just a little more estrogen than the average home!

Our mission is to “see God move and follow God’s lead”.

This applies to our lives, our neighborhood and anyone God gives us the opportunity to love in Jesus name. 

Rachel set out for North Dakota with the goal to pay off her loans so she could be freed up for whatever God might call her to do. But the mission of our house… she took with her.

Rachel has now spent two years living in North Dakota.

• She has had four jobs, three in food service and one as a substitute teacher.
• She has only $5,000 left to pay off of her $35,000 private college loans.
• And she has had countless opportunities to “see God move and follow God’s lead” in loving the community of Williston, North Dakota in the name of Jesus. A town with immense change, some exciting and some horrifying.

I already knew she was on track to make her goal of paying off the loans by her 25th birthday this summer, so what was the excitement in this phone call all about?

She had been given a house.

Pretty literally actually. Another gal that Rachel had started to love the community with had been given a house in Williston. They were going to gather more women and start living as a community on mission in their part of the city just like we had been doing in Minneapolis.

I was going to be a “mom” of the multiplication of a community house on mission in a city over 600 miles away.

You have to realize that in Williston… this is a miracle.

Where a 700 square foot apartment is now for rent at over $2,300 a month. Almost double the rent for an apartment that size in NYC. 

The oil business has boomed so rapidly that housing can’t keep up. 

And in the midst of that reality, these women were given a five bedroom house  in which to live, intentionally loving their community. 

I’m a mom, and it’s a miracle. 

God is moving everywhere. This is hard for some of us to realize because we find ourselves thinking that God is somehow more present in worship services or church buildings. 

But I believe that God is moving where ever we are at any point in our lives or throughout the day.

It might be when we are serving cocktails or lattes, selling over priced apparel in the mall, teaching kids in a local school, walking the skyways to our corporate office or as we walk the dog around the block. 

The question is, are we looking to see God move and follow God’s lead?

Follow Rachel’s adventures as she follows God’s lead at her blog:

www.reading-rachel.com – “A blog about Jesus, baseball, and everything in-between”