The House Goat: Goodbye Midland Part 1

In 2020, we started to feel restless (much like the rest of the world) but restless in our souls. Midland didn’t feel like the city we were going to stay in, despite our amazing community. Rob started writing songs again and I mean like 5 songs a week. Some he’d write in the car on the way home from being an engineer, some would take longer… written in the minutes he’d rehearse and re-write every night while he monitored bath time. With these songs came a question. “What are all these songs for?”

I could feel a shift coming. I started to have dreams about fire. Fire that did not burn up or destroy, but that got my attention, commanded me to watch and follow. Fire in a Christmas tree, fire shooting out from a light above a dining table, fire moving from one room of my house to the next.

“Prepare the way, He’s coming through. Ready or not our God’s on the move” -Bethel

God was prepping our hearts for a big ask. We knew James at church was prepping to church plant and one day without knowing yet where this church would be located he asked Rob, “What if you came to be the worship leader?” Rob came home and said, “What does it mean that I want to say yes?” We prayed, and I prayed specifically that the church would be in the hill country, a longing in my heart for country and land from a dream decades before. Over dinner some weeks later, James told us it would be Dripping Springs, and we knew in our hearts we must go.

We knew we had a year to prepare. Looking for houses in Dripping feels much like looking in Austin. Sticker shock palooza. We went back and forth, should we build? I prayed that the Lord would help me let go of the “country living” dream if I needed to, if this was not the time, and I felt him gently say, “do not give up the land.” One morning a property pulled up and its l just knew it was it. We made an offer unseen (and unsmelled), went to see it, fell in love with the vision of all that it could be, lost it, and then got a call the first people backed out.

We bought it in November and immediately began to paint over the many shades of green and brown to update it as quickly as possible to rent out. We met with the owners Kenneth and Janelle (these will surely be the names of our first goats) They were 80 year old masters level biologists. They left tags with the names of many of the plants so we would know what they were and let them grow. (You can see one hanging from the tree in the first photo) They also hadn’t cut down anything overgrown or dead… in a LONG time. She talked to me a long while about her dog breeding and grooming business, and her desire that we feed the deer. Kenny showed us how to throw dog food all over the front porch for the raccoons. Neat.

There’s so much work to be done inside and out … for our house, the new church, for our hearts, but we’re saying “yes” to all of it.

For more before and afters and real time updates follow my on instagram @thehousegoat and see the "goatstead" highlight!