A house is not a home unless it's a funeral home.

In June 2006 we were finally on staff at a church and trying to open a new joyful chapter in our lives. Unfortunately it seemed that circumstances would seek to demand otherwise, but we are stubborn. We lived 50 miles from the church we were serving at, but it was an acceptable sacrifice for the opportunity. Carpentry work was hard to come by since I was still pretty young and an entirely new face on the scene. I worked mostly for family and friends and hoped that the quality of my work would speak for itself and solicit new business for us. Although those were some pretty hefty hurdles for us at the time, they were nothing compared to what we faced at home.

Andrew and Joel were absolute terrors. No one wanted to be around them, Hannah and I included. They were just so miserable all day every day that it was contagious. We tried our best to put on our happy face as parents when we went out. When we were forced to expose the world to them we went into damage control mode, unable to carry on a simple conversation for their constant need of attention. The people at church tried their best to be compassionate and accommodating but the twins somehow managed to always push everyone’s buttons. It was like they had a sixth sense for all things stressful and pursued them with a vigor.

We pursued a program called ECI (Early Childhood Intervention) designed to offer aid to parents with children who are developmentally delayed. Several ladies came to our home and visited with us for hours filling out paperwork, observing and evaluating the boys, as well as (I’m sure) observing and evaluating us as parents. Our first pursuit was a hearing test since our nurse practitioner in TN had informed us that the twins were deaf. Both Hannah and I doubted it was true, but during that season we doubted ourselves so much more so we worked towards getting them in to have a hearing check. I was unable to go with Hannah and the boys when they were examined, but somehow we managed to find the wisest doctor in the area. Neither boy responded well nor with any regularity to the testing, so at first glance it seemed that they might in fact be deaf. The doctor, however, observed otherwise. After the tests he stepped behind each of them and crinkled a cellophane candy wrapper. At the sound of candy each jumped around to find the catalyst for their next fit and we ruled out deafness.

We settled in a little bit and started trying to find something that resembled a life. We knew that we couldn’t afford to continue driving 100 miles round trip 3 times a week for church services and office hours so we began looking for a house in the area of our church. What we discovered, though, was that the town served as a bedroom community for a large government facility and the real estate prices were absolutely insane for the area. While in most of the small towns you could buy a 3 bedroom 2 bath home for less than $50,000, the same house in our town was priced upwards of $140,000. These weren’t new homes either. Many hadn’t been updated since the 70’s, and many more since the 50’s or 60’s. Those prices put everything outside of our reach especially considering that being self-employed left me with no verifiable income and we couldn’t get a loan on a house. We started trying to think outside of the box. We started looking for whatever we could find like we had done in TN and after a few months we stumbled on the perfect building for us.

About 15 years ago a funeral home out of Amarillo bought a shell of a building for $2,500. It had been a laundry mat, a grocery store, and several other things that no one could quite remember. One of the partners in the funeral home performed most of the remodels (which included nearly everything but new structure). $50,000 later they had the nicest facilities in town, though they were also the only facilities in town. Around that same time, the town suffered a series of tragedies that resulted in the deaths of about a dozen teenagers. That inspired other funeral directors from the area that it would be good business to have facilities  here, so at one point our town of 1,200 had 4 funeral homes. With the new competition, the original guys decided they needed a leg up, so they bought a local church building that had just gone up for sale in order to have a chapel and their newly remodeled building went up for sale. And there it sat for about 10 years. The price dropped every few years. When Hannah and I finally came across it, they were asking $35,000.

We knew we’d need to be creative if we were going to make it work. We were able to get inside and see what it looked like. I took measurements and started designing a house around the current layout. We tried to keep as many walls as possible while still meeting our needs as a house. We started looking for finances and were finally blessed when a family member offered to use their savings as collateral for a loan for us. It seemed like everything was working out well with one exception: I couldn’t completely remodel a house by myself in a time frame that would fit our needs. We couldn’t afford to be split between two homes in two towns while I tried to get the building to a livable condition. About that time I was visiting with Hannah’s youngest brother who was serving as a youth pastor in MO on the phone. I jokingly suggested that they should resign since they were without a pastor and move to TX to help us fix up our house. About a month later they did.