Last year, Kevin and I achieved an unexpected dream.
We bought a house. Homeownership is difficult for many people in today’s economy. In spite of the popularity of messages about financial freedom, most people I know live with high amounts of student loan debt or medical debt, low wages, etc. Student loan payments can often exceed a person’s rent. Medical debt is the primary cause of bankruptcy in the United States. Even skilled professionals are finding it hard to meet these two challenges, regardless of how much they cut back in other areas of life.
Kevin and I started our life together with a two-week stay in the ICU–a recipe for financial difficulty all by itself. It was only the beginning.
Kevin’s medication needs trippled following his release. Some of his medications were not on his insurance company’s formulary; and copays for each of these medications could be over $150 or $200 per month. Both of us have also been hospitalized and had multiple surgeries since 2012. These things could have spelled financial disaster for us.
We began to budget and strategize actively so that we could pay down some of our medical debt as well as meet our ongoing needs. Doing both of these things at the same time is not easy. We were very surprised when we learned that we could buy a house without breaking our budget.
The house is a blessing to us in many ways. The first thing that drew us to it was these built-in shelves in the master bedroom. I learned after we moved in that they are the perfect size for braille books.I felt like a kid in a candy shop. Kevin and I are both avid readers; and most of our books are in braille. We down-sized our living space in 2014 as part of our strategy to minimize our spending; but we truly wanted and needed space for reading material.
We learned after people began arriving with our belongings that the shelves were likely built this way on purpose. Some documents had been left behind that contained information regarding the history of the property. When my mother read them to us, we understood the significance of the shelves.
The first owner of the house was Dr. Cecil Heartselle, who taught music at Anderson College for over 40 years. Dr. Hartselle was also blind. I had seen pieces of his braille music in the Church of God archives. A piece of braille music can take a large amount of space. It is no wonder that he had built-in shelves and cabinets.
When I struggled with discouragement as a young student at AU who wanted to study music in the early 1990s, my grandmother asked me whether I hadn’t heard of Dr. Hartselle. She studied piano with him in the 1930s. I was not old enough then to ask her questions about the experience. I think now that she would find it interesting that I live in his house.
My grandmother played an active role in nurturing my faith formation and my musical gifts. While music is not the primary aspect of my ministry today, it is the source of my early theological understanding and likely the strongest reason why I remained active in the church for many years. Having the connection to my family, church and university history through the home where I live helps me to remember my own testimony and to thank God for the people who have nurtured me.
Our bedroom is not the only place where we enjoy new shelves. The house has a basement, which became my office area. The shelves are pictured here, waiting for me to finish filling them with my numerous volumes of Biblical language and disability studies literature.
In the meantime, the cat is enjoying lounging in the empty space.
My office is my indoor happy place. It is not just a place to work but is also a quiet place to think. Sometimes it is a place to do both. I often post on social media that I am “doing Hebrew on the couch with the cat.” 
Upstairs Kevin and I have a peaceful living room where we often spend time together in the evenings, reading or listening to music. 
There is nothing to dislike here and everything to love.
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