What happens when you move away?
lauren on Aug 12 2008 | Filed under: things I miss
You end up missing important moments, like your niece’s wedding.
I wish money grew on trees. I’d probably remember to water one of those.
Waiting
lauren on Aug 10 2008 | Filed under: me being real
I’m not really that good at it. Waiting, that is.
It took a day and a half for the bank to counter offer and an hour for us to counter their’s. That was on Friday afternoon just before close of business and so we wait. I’ve managed to convince myself that I don’t care either way now. Whether we get this house or another one it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that we begin our new life in the house that God has for us so we can grab hold of that (the life) for which Christ grabbed hold of us.
Any house will be fine. The waiting though? Not so fine.
So what else is going on around here? Let me see… well, Kyle turns sixteen on Tuesday and…
I seriously can not think of anything else. This has been one truly boring summer except of course for the cross-country move. We’re still staying with friends and we still can’t wait to get out of their hair.
Life just seems to be on hold for a bit longer. And so I wait…
House Hunting
lauren on Aug 07 2008 | Filed under: a thing called life
Most of my house hunting over the last eleven years has basically taken place on the couch while browsing realtor.com. I’ve dreamed of the day the Lord would be so gracious as to give us our own home again. And while most of it has been just dreaming in those years we’ve also come extremely close to owning again.
We did everything possible in our own power to stop renting and to start owning. (Yes, I am aware of how terrible that statement is for someone who should be walking by faith.)
We’ve fallen out of escrow once when the owner changed their mind about carrying the loan, been approved with a co-signer on another home only to have the co-signer back out, talked another owner into carrying the loan on a home that we quickly found out was about to lose most of it’s land to the government for a future highway and we’ve even been pre-approved on our own finally but just couldn’t get the bank to drop even a dollar on the price of the foreclosure we had hoped to buy. So close, so many times. So many tears.
I’m a bit timid about getting excited but the mortgage lender faxed our Realtor the pre-approval letter and we have been actively looking to buy a home.
My hope is that all the previous troubles were simply because it was not in God’s timing. My prayers have always been that God would not allow us to step outside of His will for our family. We want His best for us no matter how hard it hurts to be told no.
We narrowed down the area and found a home that suits our family perfectly. It’s another foreclosure and we put an offer on it yesterday afternoon. I’m trying hard to be unemotional and unattached but oh.my I really, really, REALLY want this house. It needs a lot of work but for the first time ever I can look past the problems in a house. I can see us starting our new life there. The kitchen needs help, the yard needs help; it’ll probably take years to get this house to look like it does in my head. See, I’m not attached… I haven’t even considered drawing the changes out on paper. I admit I did search for a church, the school bus route and the nearest grocery store online last night though.
But if God says no again, I’ll shed some tears, praise Him and keep looking. He knows what’s best for this family and I don’t.
But I so hope we get this house.
We Survived the Move
lauren on Aug 04 2008 | Filed under: a thing called life
I had high hopes that when I wrote my first post with information about our move from Wisconsin to Texas it would be filled adjectives that described pure joy and excitement over our new home. Instead you may notice a few synonyms to the word “confused.”
I should probably start with the things that don’t befuddle me though, like the Texas weather for instance. It is just about 100 degrees outside as I type this and I’m one of the few people around who is truly loving it. Hot, sunny and almost no humidity, um yeah… I can do this.
The sky at night is simply amazing. The stars are even bigger in Texas.
I haven’t seen a mosquito in 6 weeks and I hear they are the worst they’ve been in decades back in my old stomping grounds in Wisconsin. I’m not missing those little demons.
And the food. I’m not even talking about all the lovely Mexican and TexMex restaurants. The grocery stores carry different brands AND varieties of foods than those I’m used to seeing. I love all the new choices. The meats are so much cheaper that I barely notice the higher prices on the milk and cheese. Brisket has replaced cheese curbs as my favorite food and I don’t feel like a traitor because I can use my budget as the excuse.
I like Texas.
I just thought that after being here for 6 weeks ago we would have at least figured out where we would like to live in this ginormous, “it’s like a whole other country” state. We’ve put over 5000 miles on our van since we arrived. We have seen every.single.street. in central Texas. We are completely lost when it comes to deciding where to settle down.
God has not made anything to clear to us yet and so we sit and wait. We want His best for this family. We do not want to run ahead of Him. We are staying with friends who seem to be putting up with us quite well, still we hate to be a burden. We want to move out and give them their house back. We want to start our new life, find a church home, make friends.
We pray that the Lord makes things clear to us very soon. Hubby and I have such different desires in a home that only the Lord will be able to lead us to the one that will be a good fit for our family. Even harder to deal with is that fact that banks have tightened up since our last pre-approval. We’ve heard we might need to hand over a few month’s worth of paycheck stubs from hub’s new job before we get final approval. We’ve got someone working on this though and we’re waiting to hear what he finds out. If this is the case, we may have to rent for a while first. I’d be lying if I said that the thought of renting ONE.MORE.TIME! didn’t bother me. But we’ll do what we have to do. Regardless, we’d still have to settle on a specific school district because it doesn’t look as though we’ll be able to afford a private school this time around. Steven has two years left and we’re determined to allow him to finish out those two high school years at one school.
Time is running out, school will start in a few weeks and we need to hear from the Lord soon. [said in a bit of a panicky voice]
But…
God is good! He’s got this all under control and He can be trusted.
