Moving Day

Other new happenings since I last posted....we moved! We had been trying to sell our house for 2 years and finally in early April decided to take it off the market. We were tired of constantly rushing to get the house ready to show and get all the kids and pets out of the house. We were tired of that high that comes when the realtor says, "they think your house is the one." followed by the low when they just don't call back. I just wanted to get on with our lives and be happy in the house I was in. We had thought with all the growing we'd been doing, that we needed a bigger house, but obviously if God thought we needed a bigger house, he would have seen to it that our house sold. I realized I needed to just be content with what I had, which even for it's small space, was more than many families had. Mike stated, half joking, " If God wants us to sell our house then He'll just send us someone Himself-without the help of a for sale sign, without the help of a realtor!" A week went by. After church one Sunday some friends of ours remarked, "hey, there's a cute house in our neighborhood that's going to be for sale soon. We know the owners and we can call them if you want to go look." We rode with them past the house-beautiful-on a lake, big yard, in ground pool...but we told them, "first of all, we can't even afford a house in this neighborhood, and second of all, our house hasn't sold. " "Oh. it will." my sweet friend answered, knowingly. There was a "third of all" as well: another reason why we didn't feel right looking at that house. When we had first put our house up for sale, we had found out about an empty house owned by a lady we knew. We had looked at the house, and had determined in our hearts that that was OUR house. Over the course of the 2 years that followed, we formed a special bond with the owner, an older widow, who wanted nothing more than to have a family move into the house she had raised her own children in. Everytime we'd get a "bite" about our house, we'd call her. We actually went to contract on her house when we had a contract with a buyer for our house. But when the buyer backed out, we were devastated, and when we called to tell her, we reminded each other, that if God intended for the house to be ours, it would be. So, now, 2 years later, we were still at a point where we felt if our house sold, we knew exactly where we were supposed to be going, so what business did we have looking anywhere else? We kept telling ourselves, that we would know the house was not supposed to be ours when someone else bought it. Then, the phone rang. It was the sweet lady that owned the empty home we had had our hearts set on for the past 2 years. "I'm so sorry, but I sold the house. I wanted to wait on ya'll, but I couldn't refuse the offer." I told her we understood, and that if it were meant to be our house it would have been. I was fine. I was content....I was also thinking, this is great! now we KNOW it's not supposed to be our house....Until we drove by her empty house, that we had remodeled in our heads a million times, that we had sat in the driveway of on several occasions just praying that it would be ours...and when we drove by, the new owners car was in the driveway, and her lawn furniture was in the yard...and what did I do? Forgot all about being content and getting a HUGE answer to prayer and cried-just for a minute-then I grabbed hold of the fact that it truly was an answer to prayer, even if it wasn't the answer I wanted. Another week passed and Mike got a phone call. One of those phone calls where you hang on every word, trying to figure out who it could be...or maybe I'm the only one that does that....When Mike got off the phone he had a strange look on his face-half grin, half puzzled. "That..." he began, " was a women who wants to come look at our house."
He went on to tell me that the woman on the phone had gotten our number from someone she worked with. She had mentioned a house for sale near where he lived and asked if the co-worker knew of it.
Turns out, we used to go to church with the co-worker, and when she described the location of the house, he knew exactly where it was and who it belonged to!
I asked Mike when she wanted to come, and he said, "today, in about 20 minutes!"
Can you say, "FREAK OUT?!!?" The house was in major "lived in with 5 kids" mode-how was I going to get it straightened up in 20 minutes?!? Mike seemed to think the whole thing was just funny, and tried to calm me with, " She's not going to be looking at the toys on the floor." I wasn't thinking about the toys on the floor. I was thinking about the dirty bathroom, the 4 foot high lego creation in the middle of Noah's room, the dishes from lunch all over the counter and several baskets of laundry on my bed!!!!" I started to go into drill seargent mode.."Mackenzie, get the comet!" " Mae, stick the laundry behind the shower curtain!" But Mike calmly told me just to leave it. Do you know how hard that was for me?!? Everytime the realtor had come to show the house, I had been meticulous about the neatness of the house-even down to the angle at which the soap dispenser on the bathroom counter sat! Bedfore I had a chance to argue with my dear husband, Noah shouted from his perch on the front porch railing, "A lady's here in a black truck!!!" And so she toured our house, mess and all. Much to my surprise, she came back with a friend the next day! (The houses was clean the second time she came!!!!) She seemed genuinely interested, but I just shrugged it off-the dozen or so other people that had looked had been interested as well! She called us back later that day and made us an offer; an offer we couldn't accept, but an offer, nonetheless. We countered, and then waited. Several days later she called and accepted our offer, and before I knew it, we were all sitting down with her, signing a contract for her to buy our house! We called our friends from church, and told them we were ready to look at that house in their neighborhood. We looked at it, and then had a realtor show us a bunch of over the course of the next 2 weeks. I was going for BIG and remodeled, Mike was going for structurally sound and cozy. We ended up back at the first house in our friends neighborhhood. When we went back the second time, I was determined to point out to Mike all the negative aspects of the house...weird shaped living room, tiny bedrooms, odd bathroom....but instead it was like I was seeing it for the first time-I fell in love with it, and then had to apologize to my husband for wanting to bring him there to talk him out of it!!! There was still the issue of $$$$...this house still was way out of our price range. We both agreed that we wouldn't know unless we made an offer, so we did, and the week that we waited to hear back from the owners was horrible!!!! Especially because if they turned us down, we really did not have a second choice...the thought of looking at more houses made my head spin! Much to our surprise, the sellers were interested in striking a deal, so we signed a contract with them and then went on vacation for 2 weeks!!! We really should have been packing to move, but we had already been planning a trip to see my parents, and Mike said, "If we don't go ahead and do it now, it will be a long time before we get to take another vacation!" looking back, I'm so glad he insisted that we still take our trip...we definately neededa little rest and relaxation before the big move, and it was great to see my parents again. We also left there house with a borrowed trailer loaded down with tons of furniture-my parents were downsizing, and in there quest to get rid of nearly everything, we ended up with a ton of furniture for our new house!
August 1st was moving day-our dear church family and all their trucks and trailers, along with my sweet father in law and brothers in law helped us make the move. The kids were so excited. The kids couldn't wait to jump in the pool and sleep in their new rooms. It's been 3 months now, since we moved, and there is still much to be done. Everytime I look back, I am amazed at how God's hand has rested on every event, every milestone, every adventure. I am humbled when I realize how quick I tend to forget, when things get a little crazy, that He is in control. When I was fretting because it was just days until we had to be out of our house, and we still hadn't closed on the new house..I had forgotten. When I was freaking out because we were coming home from vacation with a trailer full of furniture and no where to put it...I had forgotten. When I thought
our house wouldn't sell...when I was scared to death that it had and we didn't have a clue where we were going....I had forgotten. Forgotten that each and every time, God was and is right there, saying, "I've got this...stop worrying."
"Therefore, I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns;yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature? So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field; how they grow: They neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glorywas not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe YOU? O ye of little faith?"
Matthew 6:25-30