Glen the Hobo

Ask and you shall recieve. Such a simple concept really... one that has been overused, quoted, and even parodied in the most ridiculous of films. When I was 21 years old there wasn't a lot that I was good at, but I tell you this: I had being an idiot nailed. Even so, there was at least one thing I did right: I asked.

For some reason, it one day occurred to me that I wanted a house. And so I asked. I asked the Lord to give me a house. The desire grew and it became more real and vivid in my mind, until one night in the middle of prayer, quite literally and somewhat out of the blue, I was beating my pillow and yelling, "Lord give me a house!" and probably waking up the Dillards who up to that point I'm sure had been sleeping peacefully, as it was the middle of the night. Not yelling in a demanding sort of way but in a this-is-a-good-thing-and-I-know-you-wanna-bless-me sort of way. And six months later, after turning 22, he gave it to me. A house. All my own.

I went from sleeping on random hard floors in Nicaragua, to sleeping under a bed in a dorm, to living in a laundry room, to a basement, and from that to the master bedroom of my very own home. Not a very typical sounding progression. Seriously think about that. Four months on random matts / hard floors in Central America (on a bed when I was lucky). Three months under a bed in a dorm room. Six months in a laundry room. Thirteen months in a basement. And then from all that to my very own house. Essentially, I went from hobo to homeowner. For real, I was a certified hobo, that is, if there were such a thing, in which case I would have been a gold card-carrying member.

(And by the way, the living in the other half of a laundry room thing is not a joke. Not to mention it was actually an add-on to the house so it wasn't even properly insulated and this was during the winter months I lived there. At nights I would lie there on a broken fouton set on cinder blocks staring at the wall which was covered in vinyl siding because it used to be the outside of the house and of course, being that it was a laundry room my make-shift cot was separated from the wall by about three to four inches. I would actually run the drier to try to heat up the room and keep warm.)

But thats how it happened. In the week right after my twenty-second birthday. It was like the Lord was saying, "Glen, I love you. Happy birthday." And yea, people give me crap about it. They say its a bachelor house. And that its dodgy, at best. And they say it smells like a shoe. But its my shoe. And I love it. And here I am, five years later, still living in the best birthday present I've ever recieved and as thankful as the day I moved in. Thanks Lord. You're the best.