Having a birthday and acknowledging that you’re one year older and that you can’t slow TIME down brings a certain sense of reminiscing, don’t you find? This was therapy so if you will indulge me…Thank you in advance and I hope it blesses you! Below, you will find my Birthday wish with an invitation to join the mission!

CHALLENGES

It’s been a crazy journey, this tiny house business. The major challenges we’ve faced since going tiny almost two years ago, actually have less to do with the lifestyle and more to do with exterior people entering the scene and taking advantage of us due to owning a company. Before I expound on a few of the challenges, I want to express my gratitude here and in more detail at the end of this post. The gratitude I feel overcomes all the drama for sure!

As a startup company, we put everything in and drained our savings and resources to make it through year one. To this day, every single dollar we make goes right back in to the company so you end up working for free, which as you can imagine, after two years, gets old. No one said it’s easy to run a start up company, especially being family owned and operated. Of course, you wear all the hats and juggle all the balls!

Some of the hi-lights have been

• Watching our daughter, Christianna, run our marketing department with such talent, skill, and ease: PRICELESS!
• Todd teaching our son Andrew valuable work ethics and skill through on the job training: PRICELESS!
• serving our clients to make their dreams come true
• seeing God’s provision come miraculously when we had all but lost hope! (One time, an unexpected $1900 check, another $2800, then $15,000 and another $10,000.)
• making new friends along the journey
• gratitude for people’s kindness to believe in us. We even had an angel investor contribute $75,000, allowing us to keep our doors open.
• a newly found passion for community, relationships, and helping the homeless
• None of these beautiful things would have happened outside the trials and challenges we pressed through because our WHY and DREAMS are bigger than the obstacles!

Lenders want a track record before they will loan you money, yet you need that capital in the beginning. How does that make sense? You can also see why most companies fail in the first 5 years.

“Beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing.” I have not gone public with this story that began almost two years ago. I have protected the reputation of the parties who wronged us. (I will not give names, but you may ask me in private if you’re concerned about encountering these people in our community, lest they rob you blind as well.) Honestly, I was too hurt, betrayed, mad, frustrated, stressed, angry, to speak in an honorable way before now. My momma taught me, “If ya ain’t got nothin’ nice to say, don’t say nothin’ at all!” One day soon, in this blog, I will expound on these stories, again without names.

You may or may not know this, but in our HGTV episode, they never once mentioned our company name. This was a huge disappointment which meant for people to find us, they had to use my name and do a google search.

BLESSINGS

• Todd: True story: I woke up to his kiss, wishing me happy birthday before he headed off to work. The night before, it struck me in a phone conversation with my mom, that I was actually turning 46. (I thought I was turning 45). I bemoaned this fact to Todd before bed so the next morning, he says, “I much prefer the 46 year old “YOU” to the 23 year old “YOU”! I guess Beauty and youth ain’t everything: wisdom and wrinkles can make you a better person if you let them!!! I also remember after a few months in our tiny house, he said, “I love living tiny with you!”
• Despite the many challenges and high stress of the journey, we are still very much in love and better for having gone through the trials!
• HGTV: We made new friends; a whole new world opened up to us and we are thankful and excited to do more of it shortly we hope!
• Heart for homeless: mainly through our connections at Community First in Austin, Texas, they are housing over 200 people, many in tiny houses after just 3 years.
• Specific people who have helped us along the way: Mel and Deb Christiansen, Lois and Sonny Snyder, Beth and Brandon Carrier, Christianna Snyder, Andrew Snyder, Elisabeth Snyder, David Eickbusch (soon to be son-in-law), Raymond Lunsford, Mary Perlitz, Sonia Bryan, Hunter Boon, Candice roost page, Elizabeth Rose, Bill Lucas, Cori Dyer, Genae Browne, Nikki Murphy, Blake Lindley, Cynthia Edwards, John Gilbert, Rosalind, LeeAnn Kramer, Rapha God ministries, Living Water Ministries, Brent Bates, Keri Kropp, Robert Upton, Linda and Tucker Klaassen, Max Duncan, Christy Cracraft, Clint Fiore, Jesse Engler, Sean Murphy, Callie Roberson, Stephen Mooney, Katie Jordan. (There are so many more, too many to list here).
• The kindness of our community rallying around to support us is truly astounding and life-giving!
• Trips: We had so much fun hauling our house to tiny house shows across Texas, Illinois and Michigan, landing on the family farm last summer. (the very best way to visit family is to bring your own house!!)
• Two miraculous success stories emerged from this time. I wish I could expound, but they are not my stories; I just got to be in relationship with them and partner with God in a miracle of healing inside and outside! If you ask me, I know they’d love to share with you personally!

CALL TO ACTION! Please consider donating to this local charity for my Birthday: https://www.facebook.com/donate/451381335693212/

I chose this charity because their heart is for the homeless and we are working together to build tiny homes to help solve this problem in our city. I’d be so honored if you’d join this mission, even with a $5.00 donation today!

What do I love about Mercy Gate? The success stories that have come from it. Videos on their website, and the leaders of it have been my girlfriends for a very long time so I believe in them! The fact that they are helping the down trodden and forgotten have hope again!