One Saturday morning in February of 2005, I sat on the kitchen counter of our brand new townhouse in Forest Lake, MN, and talked to my wife, Terra, about moving to Seattle. I told her that I felt like God was calling us to go and be youth pastors at a church plant in the suburbs of Seattle, WA. I also had a crazy idea in my head about investing in real estate to provide for our young family. “What is the worst thing that can happen?” Answering my rhetorical question, I boldly stated: “If it doesn’t work out, we will just move back home, file bankruptcy and live in my parent’s basement. How bad can that be?” And with that decision, so began our waiting journey…

Little did I know, five years later, that would be exactly what we would have to do.

At the time,Terra and I had a full-time position, as youth pastors, at a great church in the northern suburbs of Minneapolis. We had just completed college and we were debt free. My amazing wife had worked full-time at the college I attended, which qualified us for free tuition. Being debt free, had allowed us to buy our first home. The cherry on top was that we had just had our first child, Arieana, in March of 2004. We were starting a great life together!

However, I had started to sense that our current season was coming to a close. God had given me a dream of planting a church someday, but I had no experience. It seemed pragmatic to join a team planting a church, before starting one ourselves.

Through mutual connections, we learned of a couple that graduated from our alma mater, who were planting a church in the Seattle area. Ironically, they also happened to be interested in real estate investing. It seemed like a perfect match.

It sounded like a great opportunity to gain some practical church planting experience. I could satisfy my entrepreneurial spirit, by investing in the booming housing market. We could also have a great life adventure in the Pacific Northwest. So as I sat on the counter talking to Terra, we decided to leave our comfortable and enjoyable life and dive in with both feet into the craziest adventure of our lives.

On Monday August 8th, 2005, we finished packing our bags, started up the moving truck and began heading West on the 1600 mile trip to Seattle, WA. Our little excursion to the Left Coast was now underway.

Upon our arrival in Woodinville, WA, we began unloading boxes and moving into our older, more expensive and smaller townhouse. The team started making preparations for the launch of the church in September. At the same time, the lead pastor and I, began trying our hand in real estate. We started driving all over the Seattle metro area researching properties. We then purchased foreclosed homes, on the King County courthouse steps on Friday mornings. Tempting fate, we had created a small group of investors from our friends and family to make these purchases.

At first, things went well and we turned a profit on the first few houses that we bought. Over the next year, we had bought and sold 13 properties. By the fall of 2006, I, personally, had a real estate portfolio worth $1.6 million. In a very short amount time I had amassed nearly $500k of equity, given the rapid appreciation of home values. This was a false hope. These values were due to the pervasive subprime lending practices at the time, which had created a bubble in the U.S. housing market. And then all hell broke loose – sending us down our winding road of waiting.

It’s amazing how our aspirations and the best of intentions, can blind us. Our motive of providing for our families through investing, to not burden the church with salaries for ourselves, caused us to take unnecessary risks, which ultimately undermined our mission. Instead of waiting to invest in real estate full-time, we had rushed into things and over committed ourselves. We completely missed seeing the freight train of the great recession coming, as we ended up getting flattened in the financial crisis.

By the end of the year, our eyes had been opened. As the recession began unfolding in the U.S. economy, both myself and my pastor decided to get day jobs. Unfortunately, the damage was done and we were stuck holding a bag of declining assets. My portfolio of homes lost $800k in value in 6 months and by the summer of 2007. My mortgages liabilities had ballooned to $1.1M, while the properties only had a combine value of $800k. These values put us underwater with our personal investors. Leaving us with over $100,000 of debt that we would need to repay, due to my mistakes.

The pain of a self-inflicted wound can be unbearable. The worst part of my waiting season was that I had to come to terms with the fact that I had no one to blame but myself. I alone had to take responsibility for my actions.

What about you? Have you ever had a painful situation that you had to endure that you caused? Or maybe your season of waiting was completely beyond your control? An illness or tragedy perhaps. How did you handle that season of adversity? We would love to hear your story below or in our community forum. We all have a story and chances are someone needs to hear yours.

In my next post, I’ll share my lowest point and then how I started to process my pain…