Life, it's a Big Faith Journey

Happiness was Lubbock, Texas for Us (Ep.6)

July 26, 2021 Diana Hudgins Season 1 Episode 6
Life, it's a Big Faith Journey
Happiness was Lubbock, Texas for Us (Ep.6)
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Show Notes Transcript

In the last episode I revealed how my big faith journey began, in this one entitled Happiness is Lubbock Texas I will share where my faith went from there and how I kept it going. It is very tough in a world with so much going on and going wrong. Its hard most days to keep your chin up. The enemy is waging war upon us, but it is so important to keep ourselves in “faith shape”, to be rested and to be good to ourselves so we are ready and able to live this life and serve our God. We must learn to trust God in all things and to pray about every one of them no matter how big or small or even how silly our prayers may seem at times. We must know that God cares about what we want because He cares for us. He wants us to talk to Him and depend on Him for every little thing.  So if you haven’t listened to the previous podcast episode 5 please do, for this one is a continuance.

I want to encourage you to take all of your worries, all of your cares, all of those you love and are concerned about and envision yourself carrying them in your arms and placing them at the throne of God, laying them at His feet and looking up to God and saying, Father I leave these things here with you to take care of. I trust you to do so. And then walking away. When you find yourself worrying about them, panicking about them, I want you to once again envision yourself trying to sneak over and begin pulling those things closer to you. And then realize STOP, don’t do it! You said you would trust Him. Whatever you are facing, you have to leave it all there and trust God to work. Keep activating it and speaking those positive words of faith. Remain patient. Thank you for deciding to come and listen to me and about my story of faith. Until next time….keep the faith, and remember that nothing is ever over, until and if God says it is. Trust Him at His Word.  -Diana Hudgins

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It's great to have you back or if this is your first time here to take a listen, thank you for doing so. In the last episode I revealed how my big faith journey began, in this one entitled Happiness is Lubbock Texas I will share where my faith went from there and how I kept it going. It is very tough in a world with so much going on and going wrong. It's hard most days to keep your chin up. The enemy is waging war upon us, but it is so important to keep ourselves in “faith shape”, to be rested and to be good to ourselves so we are ready and able to live this life and serve our God. We must learn to trust God in all things and to pray about every one of them no matter how big or small or even how silly our prayers may seem at times. We must know that God cares about what we want because He cares for us. He wants us to talk to Him and depend on Him for every little thing. 

So if you haven’t listened to the previous podcast episode 5 please do, for this one is a continuance. After we got back together and started living our lives for God and serving Him also in our church, some time had passed. He got a job he had worked hard for and enjoyed. We also had our third child. Life was moving along until one day he came home and he said that he had been demoted to the night shift and they didn’t want him to be upset and quit so they gave him a week off to rest up and think things through so as not to make a hasty decision.  My immediate question was, so they gave you a week off with pay? He said yes. So we can take that week and go find another life? He said well, we really can’t afford to do that right now. I said, well we have a gas card and this was back in the day where there were KOA camp ground where you could park, sleep and get a shower. I said we can do that. So I arranged for my sister to watch the kids that next week. We simply told everyone we were going away together because honestly we just needed to focus on God and us and our little family. We had always wanted God to move us somewhere new, somewhere we could start our lives over and begin again. But those doors had never opened.

So I worked on his resume, typing it up on a typewriter. Many of you cannot even imagine that. And I couldn’t mess up and show my pasted up errors, I would simply have to start over! We packed up and arranged everything for our kids and we gathered them all together and we prayed about what was about happen in our lives as we thanked for this opportunity.  I asked my husband where do you want to go? He said that he wanted to go as far as Amarillo Texas and that they had a shop in Lubbock so maybe we would go there. I said ok. And so we were off. We had had our house up for sale for about 4 months anyhow so we just told our God to do what He planned to do in our lives and to make a way.  

So off the two of us were. As he drove I read the Bible out loud and we prayed going down the road. We were so excited because we felt it, we knew God was going to do something, but we were not sure how it would all play out. We got to Amarillo and we checked into the hotel and got down on our knees beside the bed and thank God for safe travels and for rest. So we rested and we got up hours later and prepared for our day and had breakfast. We knew where we were going for him to seek work and that was the plan.  We knelt down at the side of the bed together holding hands and prayed for our day, our search and thanked God for what He was about to do in our lives.  

We got to the place of business where we wanted to be and we read their story and we knew they were Godly people and we were getting more and more excited. The interview was good and quick because once they saw his resume they said well we don’t have any immediate openings here, but we have one in Lubbock. Are you interested in maybe that area? We said sure we are. So he got on the phone and called the man there and said Hey I have a guy here that has a dam good resume, do you want to talk to him as he began to hand the phone over we both said just tell him we are on our way. 

We got in our truck and began driving south to Lubbock and the excitement was growing as we looked at the country side so different than we were used too. When we got to Lubbock we both were in on the interview and he got the job. They asked if we wanted meet up on another day to go over things and we said sure. So we drove back north to visit with our brother in Kansas and we stayed with him.  We were excited because this meant that we would be closer to him and his family and could spend time with them.  So we visited a day and then drove back to Lubbock where we met with all those we needed too. We agreed that we would be back in 6 weeks for we had to go home and sell and move. And then we drove around looking for houses that we could lease. We simply wrote the numbers down and a brief outside description and whereabouts. For once our desire to move after ten years of marriage God was opening this door. 

But as we got to the hotel we began to feel discouragement. We knew that our house had been on the market for 4 months and nothing happened with the sale of it. But the discouragement soon went away when God told us that he would be our real estate agent and He would send the people He wanted to buy our house and He would sell it for the exact amount He knew we needed. So we went home and we painted on our big living room window which was like a 9’ by 5 ‘ “Must Sell Fast!” 

Within two weeks we had a buyer. And as the sale was processing the buyer didn’t show up for the next appointment with the title company. But the lady there told us not to worry maybe we would have another seller come through. She must have been God’s angel of encouragement.  For she was correct another buyer came through. And even though we had been concerned about missing our 6 week deadline it appeared we were going to make it.

We would be moving after the Thanksgiving holiday. Leaving his family and my family and that was hard, but then there was all that past we could leave behind and we were excited about the newness our lives were about to experience. We called and leased one of the houses we had written down on the list, luckily it was our favorite one and it was still available. It was bigger than the one we had been living in and it had an an extra bathroom. We had not seen the inside so that was a little unsettling but the outside was nice. The leasing agent suggested a six month lease when I thought well maybe a year, but then again God was looking out for us. 

Before we left Arizona Jon Mentor renewed our vows in his little church and with our family around us. That was really special. We even had a cake to celebrate which he nearly dropped but in his attempt to not let it hit the ground comically he save the day! 

I drove our little SUV with kids and our dog and cat and then my husband and another one of our kids in the u-Haul and towing his pickup. Driving up the mountains of Flagstaff AZ was a long timely drive. We spent the night in Santa Rosa NM. We became Texans on Dec. 1. We didn’t know anyone except his new boss who had to come help us move in the refrigerator. We started our life and we were blessed with great neighbors who we remain friends with to this day. It was kind of lonely but with everything so different we were always amazed by the simplest things and off discovering all things. New everything, new schools, new time change, our first Christmas alone, new church, and new weather. Of course it snowed right after we arrived and driving in it was a whole new experience for the girl from Phoenix, Az.  It was really hard for us to rent a house because we were so used to doing things to our own.  

So six months later we began looking at houses.  After our kids had just started a new school they were going to bus our 1st grader across town and separate her from her brother. So I found a house and saw their asking price and what all they had to offer and I planned everything out as to how we were going to do all this before we even went to see the house.  It was one of those deals back then where we could pay so much down and go to the title company and take over their mortgage. So this meant it wouldn’t take very long to process.  To our surprise they accepted our offer and so we made some sacrifices and sold a few more things and we had ourselves a house we would live in for 16 years. Our church group came over in the middle of the week with their pickups and trailers and moved us. What a true blessing that was. I had made chili so they all ate dinner with us before they left. It was so nice because they delivered the boxes to each room as well.

As we got to looking at our expenses and our two moves in the past six months, God being our real estate agent sold our house for exactly to the penny what we needed to get established and into our very own home in Lubbock Texas. God is so amazing.

We worked hard and my husband worked two jobs most times and I began my preschool business up again and met my Marie I mentioned from doing this. We met so many wonderful people who helped us make this our home. We had some wonderful neighbors and our kids had some great friends. They all rode the bus together to the same school. Even our bus driver was such a blessing to us and someone I trusted to get our children to and from school safely especially in that icy and snowy weather I didn’t care very much for. I had told myself and my husband when times got tough and we missed our family, that I would give it some much time there before ever giving up and moving back. So each year as I evaluated it, I just felt that I would regret giving up and going back not knowing if only I would have pressed on a bit longer it would have got better. And you know what, it did. Lubbock was our home, a place we grew and changed so much and became a stronger family. We visited our families often and it took a lot of for us to do that but we did. I went to college while living there and it was a truly wonderful time in my life something I do not think I would have done had I remained in Arizona.

We felt God pulling us away from Lubbock to a new place, but we were not sure where. Our children two grown and our baby would be entering her senior year. We just prayed together and God began opening doors again.  My husband was accepting a new position with the original company we moved to Texas for but 120 miles south of Lubbock. At first we turned them down and then they called back with another and better position. We accepted. So he and our oldest daughter took off to go work there and the company paid for them to stay in a hotel. We again asked God to be our real estate agent for He knows already who He wants to buy our house and He already knows which house He has planned for us to buy and it is all in His timing of these things. So all the while other agents were calling and coming by and they told me that by selling it ourselves we would not get our asking price. I thought you're right for then I would also have to pay you your commission. Now not to take away from the quality of a great real estate agent and their expertise, I simply had some good idea of the process and I trusted God to lead me in this.  I also do not like when someone tells me I cannot do something. I work extra hard then to prove them wrong.

 I told our youngest daughter that our job was to sell the house so we held open house each and every night during the week beside the normal weekends. Just three days in we get a buyer who wasn’t even looking for a house but saw it and took a flyer and as they drove down the street the wife said to the husband we can go look at it right now because they are having open house. Now we had stopped our house search until we knew we had sold ours. So since it sold, the search now began for our new home and the first house we connected with online we all prayed over in the hotel room that next weekend before going to see it and then went straight too and it is the one we bought. We began noticing that it had everything we had ever said we wanted and at times had forgot we had said we wanted. But God had not forgotten.  The street was even named after my husband and son. God is so good and He blessed us. When we left Lubbock my husband was driving a big truck, and we had a driver in each of the other vehicles as a caravan made its way to our new life.  We had to live in motel 6 for a week because we had four kids, two dogs, a cat and a fish.  I made sure on my way out of town to drop those real estate agents a card letting them know that I got my full price. 

We had an exchange student the year before and he came back for a visit and helped me pack and move. He was such a blessing and we had another student, this time a girl coming to live with us that year and this way she would be going to the same school with my daughter who would finish up her last year of school. This girl to this day is part of our family. The girls didn’t have to start a new school alone. Our older daughter was working and then later continued her education. Our son was working and finishing out his contract that next year in Lubbock before moving to us. So we just felt so blessed that our family would all be moving together. But a few months into this move on one of our many phone conversations my son and I were talking and I was telling him how nice it would be if my parents moved here. He simply said “Mom just ask God for it, He cares about what you want.” I responded with you are right, God does care about what I want. So we decided to start praying about it and not telling them that we were praying about it.  This was January.  And to make a longer story short God does care about what I want, at the end of July we were moving my parents, sisters and nephews into their new home a block over for us.  They lived here for six years. We got six years of life with them right here. I would wake up each morning and feel like it was Christmas.  There were tough times and my Dad got sick and he wanted to move back to Arizona so they did. It was really hard on me especially, but in time, I too moved on in my life. I had went to junior college with our son, I later was earning my masters degree when my daughter decided to go to school with me and so we received our masters degree together. After my family moved back to Arizona I went to work co teaching with our youngest daughter. Then I went to work along side my husband. I said I sure am glad my family likes me.  Our little family has grown and we have six grandsons. It will be 33 years since our first big move ya’ll. Not always fun, not always easy, but God has always had His hand upon us. And for now, God has me sharing my faith with you. 

I am so thankful for this life, for the opportunities, for my family, for my husband for what God has provided us with. And without God we simply wouldn’t know or have experienced all that we have. 

I want to encourage you to take all of your worries, all of your cares, all of those you love and are concerned about and envision yourself carrying them in your arms and placing them at the throne of God, laying them at His feet and looking up to God and saying, Father I leave these things here with you to take care of. I trust you to do so. And then walking away. When you find yourself worrying about them, panicking about them, I want you to once again envision yourself trying to sneak over and begin pulling those things closer to you. And then realize STOP, don’t do it! You said you would trust Him. Whatever you are facing, you have to leave it all there and trust God to work. Keep activating it and speaking those positive words of faith. Remain patient. Thank you for deciding to come and listen to me and about my story of faith. Until next time….keep the faith, and remember that nothing is ever over, until and if God says it is. Trust Him at His Word.  - Diana Hudgins




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