Above All We Could Ask

We received a huge blessing this past weekend from freecycle!

I have been looking for some bookshelves to get three rooms more organized. I talked with my sister-in-law Sarah about it and she gave me some ideas for what to look for. I had just told Daniel that I’ve been looking on craigslist and freecycle for several months, not finding anything (that was either decent-quality or still available once I contacted the owner), thinking maybe we need to just go to IKEA and buy some. I actually prayed about it, because I really felt God could provide us bookshelves without IKEA if He wanted to but obviously sometimes He provides when we go to the store and buy what we need!

Well, on Thursday someone posted “2 desks, 3 bookshelves and a filing cabinet” on freecycle! and long story short, this is how God answered my prayers!

I wrote the lady about the bookshelves right away, thinking, “I’m sure they’re already taken.” (Such little faith! I had just asked God to provide these–and God could provide through freecycle if He chose!)

She sent pictures of the shelves & desk, which is kind of rare on freecycle, but so helpful in knowing whether you want to put out the time and effort to go pick something up. She and her husband had purchased the furniture eight years ago when they both were going to work from home. They no longer work from home and they needed to free up the space in their house.

The catch was they were giving preference to someone who would take “all or most of them together” since the furniture was matching. Almost without hesitating, Daniel agreed to do it. He said maybe we could use one desk and freecycle the other. I was a bit overwhelmed, still sick and feeling so weary, thinking of having all that furniture to deal with. (God, I only asked for bookshelves! 😉

Then as we stood there looking at the maze of furniture that was in our living room, we realized with homeschooling just around the corner, these quality 8-year-old “L”-shaped desks could be God providing for another need before we even asked! This could even solve the current daily situation with Mara and Micah coloring, drawing, doing “school” on the dining room table, while I’m preparing for lunch & dinner; this would give them a designated place just around the corner for these activities while I do meal prep!

Daniel was a huge help this weekend. We went through a couple different plans for how to set things up before we finally decided on the current arrangement. Then there was lots of moving furniture, sweeping/dusting, moving things in the basement, vacuuming. . . even that made me happy!

The people who gave us the furniture do have cats though, so for a couple of days Daniel, Carissa & I have been sneezing and our eyes have been itching like crazy. But I’m wiping everything down with a wet cloth, so hopefully that will remove most of the cat dander.

Without going into too much detail (or maybe I already have?!), we now have two matching desks, 3 bookshelves & a filing cabinet set up in the living room. The “L” parts (of both desks) are in the basement for when we need more desk space in the near future. We moved the bookshelves that we had in the living room to other rooms. And Daniel organized all his books on the shelves, so now they are set up the way he likes them.

The filing cabinet is meeting another need (once again, something that I didn’t ask for): helping me organize & file our paperwork! I used to be good at paperwork–when I was in the workforce, but here at home, I’m really slack. God knew my need, and I didn’t even ask!

We are getting a bunch of stuff cleaned and organized! There is still sooo much more work to do around here (trying not to think about that tonight!), but I can’t express how encouraged I was, first, that God provided as the Bible says, “exceeding abundantly above all we could ask or think!” and second, that we were able to re-organize the living room desks and shelves and get started organizing other rooms too.

Thank you, Lord, for providing more than what we asked!