Trust More - Worry Less

November 6, 2025

Hello everyone,

Autumn is over where I live.   There is frost in the morning on the car.  Although the trees displayed many bright colours this year, most of the leaves have now fallen off in the last round of wind and rain storms.   The planters look forlorn along my front walkway as some of the flowers have died in the cold.   It is the time of year when I think about staying inside with warm fires and hot chocolate with marshmallows.   November in Ontario is a transition between fall and winter.

Three years ago, at this time of year, I bought a very old house in a town east of where I live.   It was a new business venture for me.  I had been trying to buy a house to renovate closer to where I lived for about six months, but the prices were higher than my budget.   After a few rejected offers, and a lot of prayer, I was finally able to purchase this house with the funds I had saved.   It didn’t look great on the outside.   Blue paint was peeling off the aluminum siding and the original white showed through in many places.   The window frames were rotten and the windows did not open – a couple of them were boarded up.   The flooring inside was worn down to the plywood underlay, and a bit slanted because the foundation was broken on one side.   I thought I could afford to fix those things since the purchase price was very low.   So, I started on the demolition of the interior walls, while I waited for someone to repair the foundation.

That was my first obstacle.   The quotes I received to repair the foundation were triple what I had budgeted.   The second obstacle was that the workers couldn’t start until six months after I bought the house.   When May came, they still could not start.  A year after I bought the house, I hired someone else.  He did an amazing job and even better, he taught me how to do some of it.  He also handed me a shovel.   While he was rebuilding the foundation, I started digging out the crawl space so that it was at least three feet deep everywhere.   That took time and I built muscles in the process.   But I wasn’t paying someone else to do that, which helped the budget.   At this point, I was close to using up all my savings.

There was a small addition on the back of the house, which was added around 1936.   The previous owner had been using it as a kitchen.   Although many of you would laugh at that description, since it contained a double sink and nice counter, but no cupboards!   When I started tearing down the interior walls in the addition to replace the drywall, I found that much of the wood frame had been invaded by carpenter ants and the supporting studs were rotten.   God designed carpenter ants to eat dead wood.  That is wonderful when they are in forests, but not in our houses!    When I had someone take a look, he found that the decaying walls did not even have a proper foundation under them.  The whole addition needed to be knocked down and rebuilt.    This became the third obstacle.  After getting drawings and a building permit, I found a contractor who could rebuild it for a reasonable price.   I was now dipping into my line of credit to pay everyone.

We discovered the next big obstacle when the electrician came to put in the new wiring.  The carpenter ants did not stay in the outside wall.   They also spent some time eating the wood in the main supporting wall of the house.   My budget was completely shot at this point.   All I could do was keep drawing on the line of credit to pay the workmen and materials, and hope there was enough.   I prayed a lot for wisdom, did as much of the work as I could myself, and wondered if I had heard the Lord when I thought it was the right house to buy.

Did I really hear the Lord?  Did He really give me peace about purchasing this house?   If that was true, then He knew I would encounter all of these obstacles and He had a plan.   I just needed to trust Him a bit more.  Actually, a lot more!   For those who have read my book, in the chapter on giving, I describe a time when I was in debt because I didn’t pray about some major expenses, and I needed the Lord’s help to get me out of the mess I had made.   He did!  But this time it was different.   It was something I had prayed about, and everything was going wrong.   Was I willing to trust Him again?  I spent some time arguing with myself about it, and then brought it to the Lord.   Selling at this point was not an option.  With nothing finished, I would lose all the money I had spent.  So, I gave it to Him, and kept going, asking for wisdom each day.

This past summer, the major work was all completed: insulation, windows, drywall, wiring, plumbing, foundation, and new addition.   It looked amazing.  All the contractors were paid, and the line of credit was empty.   The only problem - I wasn’t finished yet.   I still had a kitchen to buy, all the flooring, a hot water tank, and a few other things.   I went to the bank.   They were able to loan me another 25K at a higher interest rate.   I carefully did the math and it looked like enough.   I was grateful to the Lord for His additional provision.   In October, that extra money was all gone.  I wasn’t sure how, but every dollar was gone.   The new kitchen looked wonderful, and we finally had hot water, but the upstairs flooring was still to be ordered, along with appliances.   The credit card bill was coming due with the last things I had purchased.   I did not know how to pay for the rest.

I reviewed every remaining expense and calculated my income.   There was not enough!   I brought it all to the Lord again wondering how to deal with it.    And I came out of that prayer session at peace, knowing that God was in this and would get me through it, even if I lost everything.   All the wealth of the world is in His hands, so even if I lost on this business venture, He was still able to provide all my needs.    As I thought more about that, I was reminded of the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego from Daniel chapter 3.   They were prisoners of war in a foreign country and were believing God to save their lives when it didn’t seem possible.   But they had so much trust in Him, they said they would believe in Him even if He didn’t save them.   That was how I felt.   I had to trust Him that much.

The next week, I was amazed at what happened.   I received a raise in pay at the clinic where I work part-time.   I was offered a painting job (which covered one interest payment) and a local church offered me ongoing part time work to do some building maintenance for them.   I did not ask for any of these things. The only thing I did was to ask some friends to pray for me.  I also received wisdom from the Lord on how to stagger some of the interest payments so that what income I did have would last until more came in.   It was amazing to see each problem disappear little by little, after I trusted the Lord. 

As I write this, the house is finished and up for sale.   It looks like I will lose money on this business venture when it sells, but I have learned so much.   My knowledge of buildings has increased exponentially, and the Lord has proven once again that He is worth trusting.   Most importantly, I don’t have to worry about the outcome.  

I hope that you also can trust Him more and worry less, no matter what situation you are in.

Blessings,

... Gayle