Wow!! It's been an incredible past few days. In fact, as I'm writing, I'm completely amazed by the way things are falling into place. Sometimes it's difficult to look through the fog of life, but when it clears, you realize the beauty that stands before you. Well, that's what is happening for my family right now.
Recently, Courtney and I have realized the need to look for a bigger home. I love our condo, and have ever since I moved in five years ago. Despite all the issues getting into it, (different story. I'll tell you later if you're interested) it's been a wonderful home. This is the home where Courtney and I started our marriage. This is the home Romey began his life. This is where everything has started. I'm a sentimental kind of guy (cue sappy love music), so there's a lot of reasons for me to want to always stay here. But, it's just not realistic. One of the nice features of our condo is the two outside storage units. Until three months ago, we've always had room in those units. The one unit holds boxes. So, we have been filling boxes with stuff (clothes, toys, seasonal stuff, etc) and placing them in this unit. Three months ago, I placed the last possible box in this unit, closed the door, and told Courtney it was time to look for a bigger place. As much as I love our home, we had outgrown it.
For the past couple of months, we have been looking through various forms. We spent time on our computer, our phones, driving around neighborhoods and talking to friends. Finally, we called Melissa, our realtor. (btw, she's the best realtor ever and you should use her) We sat down with her and sketched out a plan of where to look. Since Courtney teaches in Kettering, we truly felt that was where we should look first. We had expanded our search initially, but finally settled on looking through Kettering. In the last couple of weeks, I'm not sure how many homes Courtney and Melissa went through because I was at work most of the time, but I do know we had a stack of papers with 70+ homes listed on them. It was a little overwhelming at first, but again, Courtney did most of the searching. Each time she found a house that she really like, she would let me know and we would go see it again later that day. After a couple weeks, we found one. There were so many nice things about this house. Brand new wood floors, refinished kitchen, tiled entry way, a four seasons room with a 12' ceiling, and several other really nice features. We loved it. So, we went back a couple of times to really look at it. We even talked about making an offer on it. So, I thought we were done. However, I had this thought that we should look at a few more. I'm not sure why that feeling came, but it did. I didn't expect Courtney to be in favor of that thought, but she graciously agreed. This was a Thursday afternoon. With Melissa going out of town for a few days, the next time we would go out would be Sunday.
The nice thing about this house was it's location. We would be five minutes away from everything (work, grocery, highway, etc.) The street seemed very quiet which would probably change once a certain one year old would move into the neighborhood. Because we really liked the neighborhood, I decided to look around this house to see what else was out there. Searching online can have its ups and downs because it's hard to be certain of what we could get. Anyway, there was another house that intrigued me. This house appeared in my search, but it wasn't one of the original 70. The reason, this house was out of our price range. It wasn't too high, but it was still out our range. I asked Melissa if we could see this house even knowing it probably wasn't an option for us. Not wanting to get our hopes up, we loved this house. This house had beautiful landscaping in the front and back yards, a kitchen and a dining room, a family and a living room, 3 bedrooms, 2 and a half bathrooms, an unfinished basement, and a four seasons room. With all these nice features, we knew it was going to be a stretch. After some time of prayer and processing, we decided to make an offer on this house on Monday evening. We knew what we could afford and that it would take a miracle for the sellers to accept our offer. We also knew that if the sellers decided to counter offer, we wouldn't be able to manage it. So, this was a one time offer and we were hoping things would work out for us.
I was extremely nervous on Tuesday as we waited to here back on our offer. I wanted to be excited because we knew that if God wanted us to have this house, we would get it. We also knew that if something else was set aside for us, this deal would not go through. While this was a good place to be, it was hard to focus all day on Tuesday. I tried to distract myself with work since there is plenty to do. Finally, around 2:00, Melissa called me. The sellers had accepted our offer. I was blown away. In tears, I called Courtney to share the good news with her. We knew God had been behind this the whole way and we were getting to experience His love through this experience. With a house, now we needed to find someone to rent our condo.
For the past two weeks, we've been advertising our condo within our circle of friends. While we hadn't received any hits, we knew we still had options available to us through online advertisements and various contacts through the church. Honestly, it would be really nice to sell our condo, but it's not realistic considering the state of the market right now. We're not in a position to lose a lot of money on it and keeping it doesn't mess with what we can buy as long as we have someone renting it. We had someone talking to Courtney via Facebook regarding renting our condo, but sometimes conversations don't lead anywhere. The girl that Courtney was talking to is moving back to Ohio in September. Her husband is in the military and they need a place to live when they get here. We thought it might happen, but it's good to know everything is lined up. Well, everything is now lined up. On Wednesday evening, this girl confirmed she wanted to rent our place starting the first weekend of October. Considering we are closing on the new house the third week of September, the timing is perfect. When you see things like that this fall into place, it's completely obvious that God is working in our lives.
Within 48 hours, God put each puzzle piece into place to work this out for us. It's unbelievable to see everything work out in ways that completely blow my mind. It's in these moments I realize how minute my existence truly is, yet how important I remain to God. I know I don't deserve the blessings that are given to me, but God continues to bless me. As we look to what God wants to do with us, sometimes it's not clear. However, I know I can rest in His unending faithfulness as I desire to live my life for Him. I truly believe He has plans for us in this new home. As we anticipate this next step on our journey, I can't wait to experience what God has in store.
-Just my thoughts...
About Me
- Andrew
- I am married to the best woman in the world and she's way out of my league. Way to go, me. I love being the father of our little boy, Romey. We were blessed with him on July 8, 2010. My daughter, Paisley Joy, brings me so much joy. She joined our family on July 23, 2012. We also have a dog, Sasha, our Shiba Pug. I wear many hats as a music pastor while Courtney works as a music teacher in Kettering. Life is Good!!