When I don't believe in Overflowing Water Glasses...

I've been stressed, which isn't my normal state of mind.  I'm mostly an optimist who looks at the glass and wonders why people are stupidly arguing over the state of its fullness, because God's about to make it overflow.

We have a building we call the hub with our meeting spaces and 5 bedrooms in it.  The rent of said residents pays the bills.  In the past, the rooms have been filled with our staff and student leaders.  We had 4 empty rooms this summer, and I was faced with the undesirable task of filling them. 

After nearly a month of advertising, facebook chats, one million showings, I had three rooms left.  This is obviously not my gifting or I have inflated expectations.

On Monday I was tired, and stressed, and although I don't want to admit it, anxious. 

I had this vision of the hub being filled with girls that hated the sight of one another ranging from the ages of 18-75.  Why? Because I felt desperate, and the viable solution was lowering the standard and opening up to every one including their just-released-from-the-penitentiary cousin.

The other vision was the hub being empty and me raising support and scrounging every month to pay the bills while my voice echoed through the empty halls.

So, last resort, (but should have been first resort), we prayed.  We walked around the hub and we prayed over it, for the right residents and for good relationships between them and for those that did not know Him to find Him while they resided in this now hallow space. 

The next day, I had two leases and two deposits turned it.  I also had one lease out for the third room.  I was elated! because I liked all the residents and they were all older college students going to BYU and UVU and I really thought they would like each other.  I pulled the listing off facebook!

The third lease was for a girl that just graduated from BYU that I really liked and would be a great fit, therefore putting the nail in the coffin of my nightmare that the hub would be filled with ex-convicts. 

By Wednesday, I realized she was not going to turn her lease in, and I sadly and very reluctantly re-listed the room.  Did I say reluctantly.  Is there a stronger word than reluctantly, because I choose the stronger version.  This had been the second lease to fall through for this room.

Because we were stationed at the hub all week for our annual Support Raising Blitz, I asked the staff to pray and they did, and then God did the impossible, as usual.

She showed up with her mom at 4:05PM on Thursday.  She had two arms full of tattoos, and my unknowing judgmental but not opposed to tattoos brain, immediately decided she wouldn't fit with our current residents and I was wasting my time. 

Then I got to know this sweet, Christian girl, whose dad happens to play in the worship band in his church in California, and who also attends UVU.  I spent an hour with her and her mom, and I realized that God, as usual had this all planned out and as usual, it is scientifically or Biblically impossible for Him to fail. 

Her lease and deposit are in, and when I received them via email on Friday morning, I literally teared up and wanted so desperately to have a stage on which I could climb up in front of a crowd of people, throw my skinny arms in the air, and yell, "THE HUB IS FULL!"