Sue

I’m constantly aware of God looking after me and answering my prayers, especially for material needs. I’ve never felt poor or that I was lacking things, even when I was living on benefits as a lone parent with two young children. I’ve found that when I daily put myself into God’s hands, and decide to do his will, life just works better. Things fall into place; things I’ve needed turn up. It’s a daily decision I have to make. On the days that I submit to God, even when life isn’t going smoothly, I have so much peace that it doesn’t matter. I could walk out the door into the pouring rain without my umbrella and still feel that the sun is shining.

One example I can give of God’s care for us is our home. I’ve lived in the same house for about eleven years now. It’s my home and I love it; it’s also a direct answer to prayer.

Previously I was living in a squalid one bedroom flat with my son Sam, who was seven, and my baby daughter Freya. The flat was in such a bad state and so full of damp that it was making both of my children ill.

We’d been on the housing list with Barnet Council for eight years, but when they finally offered us a new flat, we found it was just as bad as the one we were in. I appealed against the flat, although I had heard that doing this could get you taken off the housing list altogether. I won the appeal, which was very unusual at the time.

In the next few weeks I thought about what I wanted in a place to live. I took Freya on endless bus rides round the area to see different places. What does anyone want from a home, I wondered? I built up an idea as I looked - somewhere that isn’t in a tower block, with a little garden, a few trees nearby, an area with community, not too far from shops. I talked about it with the children a lot. I told them that we needed to ask God what we wanted, and trust him to help us. One day we sat down with the coloured pencils and drew a picture together of the house we were asking God to give us.

As we talked we drew a square for a house, put a roof on top, then a line down the middle to make it semi-detached (I thought detached would be too greedy). On each side, as we chatted, we drew a front door on the right and a kitchen window on the left, putting a triangular porch over the door. We put in two upstairs windows, with our faces looking out from the one on the left. Then we put some flowers and grass in front of the house. The final touch was two trees outside our (left hand) side of the building.

Within two or three weeks we were given the address of our new place. We were all really excited. We would have to wait another week for the keys, but a friend offered us a lift in her car the same afternoon, just to go and see it from the outside. When we reached the address we were completely stunned to see the house I had drawn, right in front of us.

It was semi-detached, with an upstairs and downstairs window, and a little triangular porch over the front door. Ours was the left hand side of the building, and the front door was on the right, like my drawing. There were flowers and grass. The only thing that didn’t look like our picture was the trees, as there were none on the street.

‘Thank you God! It’s perfect!’ I said. Then I was a bit cheeky, and I said, ‘but what about the trees?’

We managed to go back the next day to gaze at our new house. A truck from the housing association was making its way up the road. Outside every property, it stopped, a man got out and dug a hole, and another man planted a sapling. They moved steadily onwards, dig, plant, dig, plant, and when they got to our house, they planted two.