Opening Doors

Home is a place I love. A place to relax and unwind. A place that is crazy and fun. A place to be with family. So where or what is home for you?

For the past 5 years Chris and I have called "home" our little house on West 5th. However, as our family has grown, we've realized this house has become a tight space to continue being called "home". So slowly, we started to look for a new home.

If you've purchased a house you know what a daunting and important task this can become. What are your wants and needs that can turn a house into a home? Chris and I had a wish list of things we were looking for with this next home and knew it wouldn't be easy or maybe even possible to put a check next to each item on our list, but we also both firmly believe that God would let us know when the right house would be the one we'd call home.

I've always had the Zillow app on my phone, ever since we moved to our current home, I quite enjoy looking at other houses that are for sale. So we began browsing every so often. In 2017, right after Claire was born, we looked at the first house. It was newly remodeled, the work done was absolutely stunning, but the more times we went to look at it I just couldn't picture our family there long term. Also, while my postpartum journey was amazingly smooth, I'm not sure if the best time to make a big life decision is right after you've had a baby and you're hormones are still settling down. I had Claire's room decorated perfectly, I was adjusting wonderfully to raising her in our current home; so I don't think (emotionally) I was 100% ready to make such a big change, when I was still exploring our most recent big change. Ultimately, passing on this house was the right decision for us, and it helped us really realize what we wanted in a home.

Just under a year later we went to look at a second house. This house was being sold by someone we knew; a friend of my parents, whose children I'd known for as long as I could remember. It was reassuring knowing the care this house had received the past many years. It checked off almost our entire wish list for our home, so we made an offer. A few hours later we heard that another couple had put in an offer as well. I'd like to think knowing the seller helped give us an edge; but she counter offered and it was not an offer we were willing to meet. Chris is a very quick decision maker and I'm the type of person that once I've made a decision I'm ready to get it done/move on, so when we knew God was telling us this wasn't the house, fine, done, on to the next house.

Throughout the summer we went to see a few houses here and there, but nothing made us stop and stare. Then in late August there was the third house (third time's a charm right?) and what a roller coaster it was...

The pictures on Zillow didn't make the house look amazing, and it looked like someone older had lived there. Could I look past the decor and see the possibilities? It interested us enough to go look at it. It was a nice surprise when we went to see the house and it was basically empty, which of course, made it super easy to picture us living there. I definitely liked this house more than I anticipated. It was recently renovated, which meant minimal work for us, but it still had character. Very interested, we went back with my parents to see it again a few days later. It didn't check everything off of our wish list (I don't think it really even checked off as much as house 2), but this was a house we could see becoming our home.

Any offer we made or would make on a house would have to have a contingency that we would have to sell our house. We found out that this house was an estate, so an attorney was involved and they rarely accept contingency offers, but as you know we're very much "if it's God's will, it will be" so we decided to make an offer with the contingency. Much to our surprise our offer was accepted! Now we had to get our house on the market and sold as quickly as possible.

Things were moving along, we got a few things fixed up at our home and signed papers to officially list it. With a contingency offer the house, even though our offer was accepted, stays on the market and can still accept other offers. The day we got pictures taken and were ready to put the big listing up we got a phone call from our realtor. They had accepted another offer on the house...we now had two options: 1) remove our contingency on the offer, basically saying we'd buy the house without selling our house first - which wasn't a possibility since we needed the money from our home for the down payment on the other house - or 2) sell our house in 48 hours.

Knowing the likelihood of selling our house, for a good price, on Labor Day weekend, was little to none, we mentally moved on. Surprisingly I was ok. I have a fear of missing out on things so I was really needing a sign that this was the house God had planned for us. I didn't want to get this house and see something better come on the market later. So this was the sign, this wasn't our new home.

Sunday after church, our realtor asked us if someone could come look at our house at 2:00pm. In my head I thought "why even bother?", but we said ok. So, 3 hours before our 48 hour window closed we had our first showing. It didn't really phase me, I probably didn't even clean up as well as I could have. The odds that this person would look at our house one time, and make an offer - a good offer, in my head was zero.

At 3:30pm Chris got a phone call. It was our realtor. We had an offer - a great offer - an offer we would've been excited about if we had months to sell our house! We accepted and an hour before our 48 hours ended our house was sold and we were able lift the contingency on our offer. The house was ours. One showing. One offer. If that's not a sign from God I don't know what is.

We didn't doubt God's power, but we also didn't except to see it in this crazy dramatic way. It was exactly what I needed and He knew that. God literally opened the door to our new home, and we thank and praise Him every day for this and all He's done for us. The common phrase is "Home is where the heart is", but I think it should be "Home is where God is". He is and will always be our home.

"As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord" Joshua 24:15