2 bedrooms. Check.
1.5 baths. Check.
Master bath vanity with a generous countertop. Check.
Dishwasher. Check.
Sunlight and a patch of grass immediately outside my front door. Check.
I got these things on my wish list for my new home at a lower cost than I’d imagined possible. This good fortune and more prompted my sister to wonder if my taking care of our parents so well for eight years brought a kind of karmic grace into my life.
Yeah, I’ll go with karmic grace.
But I’ll also go with Matthew 7:7:
Ask, and it will be given to you…
I place clear orders at restaurants for meals that I want, so why would I wing it with something as important to my prosperity—to my aliveness—as housing?
The answer is that I wouldn’t and didn’t.
Long before I could see a path back home to Atlanta from Alexandria where I was living as a caregiver, I was getting clear about features that I wanted in my living space—the number of bedrooms, etc.—as well as its location.
As for how I placed my order for my desires, I wrote lists and used my voice.
Ask, and it will be given to you…
I said to God and my heavenly helpers, “Please bring me an apartment with X, Y, Z for $1,500 a month or less. Oh, and bring it to me in my inbox. Thanks.”
Over time, I also stated my desired location and a few more wishes, trusting (mostly) that my requests would be granted or I’d get something better.
Are you making clear requests for your prosperity?
Fast forward to last month when I arrived in Atlanta.
As much as I wanted to move on from 24/7 caregiving for my mother, leaving that situation hasn’t been easy. Not only do I miss Mom, making big changes—even when desired—can be destabilizing and surface difficult emotions.
What I’m saying is that I was feeling so sad and pressed for time to find housing that I’d forgotten I’d placed an order to live in the outskirts of Atlanta in Decatur until I started looking at a listing for a townhouse there.
“Oh, yeah,” I said to myself, “I did say that I wanted to live in Decatur…”
I had three main reasons for this:
- I have a soul sister living in Decatur.
- I’ve long loved downtown Decatur, especially the library on Sycamore Street.
- Decatur is rich in opportunities for civic engagement.
As far as #3 goes, just visiting Decatur gives you the feeling that people there do stuff. And a LinkedIn post by Hahrie Han confirmed this for me. It’s been a while and I can’t find the post, but I remember it naming Decatur as a place of high civic participation.
Han is the director of the SNF Agora Institute at Hopkins, which “aspires to address the deterioration of civic engagement and facilitate the restoration of open and inclusive civil discourse that is the cornerstone of healthy democracies.” Learn more here.
Are you making clear requests for your prosperity?
It’s been ten days since I moved to Decatur.
Though I’ve been busy unpacking and doing all the tasks that moving across state lines requires, I haven’t been too busy to place more orders and told my heavenly team that I want to work downtown for the City of Decatur on neighborhood-based care systems.
According to a report by The Federal Reserve Bank of Minnesota, “Caregiving is the single most common reason people aged 25-54 give for not working.” Or, as I’ve heard it said…
Care is the work that makes all other work possible.
That’s why my prosperity wish list—for my prosperity and ours collectively—has my desire to help birth quality care systems at the top.
Nowadays, it could be easy to think that the world is going to hell in a handbasket. If you’re leaning that way, lean into your imagination instead.
Get clear about what you want, be unashamed to speak it out (even if just to yourself) and follow your inner guidance. Meaning, act on your curiosity, excitement, inspiration, intuition and/or vision in a spirit of trust that things are working out.
Yes, I’d made a list of what I wanted in a home, but it still took me reaching out to people in my network to secure the place. And get the listing for it directly in my inbox like I asked!
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