Roller Coaster

2017 was a roller coaster year for our family.  Incredible joy and deep sorrow.  Every event came back to back with another event of the opposite feeling. For instance
we laid Ben’s grandma to rest the day before our son graduated from High School and we laid my grandma to rest the day before Thanksgiving.  All year was like this.  So it should not have surprised us when buying our home happened the same way.  At the end of August we got a notice to vacate because the church that owned the house we were living in needed it for a parsonage.  They gave us 60 days.  We had been talking about buying a house in 2018, so we went ahead and started to explore our options.  And we prayed!

We were not worried because through all of the trials we have walked through in the past 10 years, we have learned that God always has a plan and will always provide.

Surgery

Our loan started to come together and we started to look at houses. Then…in the middle of September we found out that Jonathan, our 11 month old twin boy, needed to have brain surgery to install a shunt to fix his Hydrocephalus.  The surgery was scheduled for October 2nd, the day after he and his sister celebrated their first birthday.  By this time, we had figured out that the housing market was a seller’s market and if we found something we liked, we had to act fast!  We made offers on several homes, but other people always out bid us.  It was very discouraging especially as time continued to tick away. Jonathan’s surgery was successful and we were able to leave the hospital a day early.  The next day we went with our realtor to look at homes again.

Nothing.  Nothing fit our criteria in our price range.  Nothing.

Hearing that from our realtor was very hard.  That night, we just prayed and asked God to show us his plan.  Fortunately, the owners of the house we were living in gave us an extra month to move out because of Jonathan’s surgery.

Found It!

The next morning, I got online to look for houses as had become my habit.  I had already looked when I first got up, but I had to try again.  And then I found it.  It fit everything we were looking for and it was in an amazing location!  I texted our realtor and he booked an appointment for that afternoon.  It had just been listed that day.  I called my husband so he could meet us there.  It only took us a few minutes to realize that we had just found our new home!  It was an old brick rancher with 4 bedrooms on an acre of land.  It had a big garage and shed behind it.  Fireplace, wood stove, appliances, everything…except a bay window.  Those are my favorite, but we can/will add one. Right, Ben????  We were afraid to hope too much, but we started to dream…what could we do with a whole acre of land?

We put in an offer that evening.  The next day was torture as we waited to hear from the owners.  They finally came back with a counter offer and we accepted it. We were under contract!  And then the paperwork began, but we were on cloud nine! We were buying a house!

Surgery Again!

And a week later we found ourselves back in the hospital for an unplanned surgery for Jonathan. The shunt had failed and fluid was collecting on the side of his head.   Fortuanely his second one was more successful and we were headed home the next day.  I am happy to report that he has been doing fine since then and continues to be our happy little boy.

Home

 As soon as we got home I dove back into paperwork and packing and paperwork and cleaning and paperwork and did I mention paperwork????  The amount of paperwork they needed to process the loan was overwhelming!  It seemed like everyday they were asking for some new document that we didn’t know we needed.  It was even worse than all the paperwork we needed to finalize Gabriel’s adoption!!!  But finally it was over.  On November 6th, we signed a whole lot of paperwork and then were handed a key.  The house was ours! Our first real home!!!!  God had provided again! And then we started to plan…what will we do with a whole acre of land?