“He lifted me out of the pit of despair,
out of the mud and the mire.
He set my feet on solid ground
and steadied me as I walked along.
He has given me a new song to sing,
a hymn of praise to our God.
Many will see what he has done and be amazed.
They will put their trust in the Lord.”Psalms 40:2-3
This “about” page used to be filled with text that went something along the lines of “Aren’t we such a sweet, pure, hard-working family that deserves your business?” However, God has worked powerfully in our lives since August, 2018 and that is no longer what we are “about”.
Our story might start a lot like yours. We were raised in good homes, got married determined to build a good life - hit some bumps along the way that made us aware of the powerful love of God, but then life got in the way and we kept working hard to build a good life. That’s a good thing, right? We put God in a box that we opened on Sundays for an hour and then went back to living life on our own.
Slowly, everything deteriorated. Then one day, I sat in a pew after a powerful sermon about the miracles of Jesus and I told God that He could have our marriage. We had tried to make our marriage work for 9 years and we were separated and on the brink of divorce. “God, you can have it - I don’t really think even You can save this, but it’s all Yours and good riddance.”
Everything changed, like a pinhole of light in complete darkness. Slowly that light got brighter as the Lord revealed to us the walls we had built up, the lies we’d been believing, the sins we’d been justifying, and the control we’d been unwilling to surrender.
A huge break-through for me was realizing the marriage wasn’t the problem - it was all of the lies I had been believing about my identity. No matter how hard I worked at being a wife, mother, businesswoman, volunteer, neighbor - it all fell short and didn’t fulfill me. The lies were always in the back of my mind - “You aren’t good enough. You are a failure. You aren’t lovable. You were never meant to be a mother.”
God started replacing those lies with Truth. “You aren’t enough, but I AM sufficient. I LOVE you. I delight in you, I sing and dance over you in delight. I know every intimate part of you and you are worth dying for. I take all things and turn them for your good — My thoughts of you, My plans for you, are so much higher than anything you could want for yourself, so much more than you could ever imagine. Come to Me all who are weary and heavy burdened and I will give you rest.”
The JOY, friends, the FREEDOM, PEACE, LOVE, and HOPE that God has poured into me through His Truth - and into my husband in his own story - has filled me so full that there is no room for fear anymore. There’s no room for anger or bitterness or depression or loneliness anymore. His mercies are new every morning.
One of the many things I’ve surrendered to God is this business. I finally gave it to Him, fully expecting Him to tell me to shut it down, surrendering anyway knowing His plans are better than my own. Instead I heard Him say “Thank you, now that The Master Builder is on board, let’s get to work.” It’s been a wild, joyous ride ever since. Plans changed and then fell into place, God provided the finances, and considering the current world crisis- how could He have timed it any better? Through it all I’ve been filled with peace, trusting that even if it ended up as a huge, expensive flop that made me look like a fool to everyone else, that I was obeying and He is sufficient.
I don’t know yet what the Lord wants to do through this business, but I know it’s His. The response from the local communities has blown us away — God is so good. Our prayer is that He uses this market, the pies and meals we prepare, the animals we raise, the crops we grow, the flowers we tend — that He will use it all to His glory.
Justin and Valerie Visser