pride, humility, our house and my ebeneezer - Part I

*I've been a big old funk lately...and have decided to try and work it out through words.  It has not been a pretty process -more of a humbling one.  My journey toward understanding this season turns out to be quite a long one, so I will be breaking it down into a few posts over the next couple of weeks.

Less than a mile's walk from our front door finds you winding down streets filled with some of the most beautiful homes and mansions in this city.  These homes could easily be called estates.  Each one is completely unique, their landscaping probably cost more than my entire house, and there are many different architectural styles represented.  Within this neighborhood's hills are tucked lush, sprawling golf courses, green parks, ponds and parkways.  It is beautiful and I love to go for walks there with Lily imagining as I pass who lives in each home, admiring from afar the beauty of each home and wondering about the stories lived within their walls.

Putting our house on the market has heightened my awareness and my sensitivity to all things real estate.  I have long poured over shelter magazines dreaming of our future place, imagined our life within our future walls and tried to calculate when and how we are going to finally get "there" where ever our "there" might be.  I have been monitoring house prices in our area, studying online websites for possible future neighborhoods and watching with an aching heart as so many homes nearby have sold while ours simply hasn't.

Ours is a starter house and we are trying to sell to a very specific type of buyer due to the size and amenities (one bath, no basement etc) of our little place. It was perfect for me when I lived there as a single gal, cozy when Joe and I married and he moved in, and pretty much cramped now that Lily has arrived.  It's small, but it is lovely too.  I bought it when I was single and have loved it for over eight years now.  I walked in the door and knew in an instant that this was my house.  I just figured that when the right time came for us to move, someone else would do the same.  While people have come to see our place, along with the positive comments, there have been people who do not want to live near an elementary school, who want a dining room, who want a basement, who want our neighbor's deck to be maintained a little bit better...on and on the list goes of things we cannot change.  The right buyer has simply not come through the doors yet.  So we wait...and I dream of what could be ahead.  So close, yet so far away.

To the untrained eye, our house has only been on the market for a couple of months.  However, my dreams did not begin simply when our house went onto the market.  You see, two years ago, (a few months after Luke was born), was the first time we decided to move.  We thought it would be easier to move then, when it was just us, before more kids came along to "complicate" the moving process.  It was exciting, it was fun and it brought so much hope to my grieving heart...the imagining of a new beginning for our family.  So we began packing away some of our things for storage until we moved so as to help our little place appear more spacious and roomy. 

But then, the company where Joe was working lost a major funding source causing wide spread layoffs.  Joe lost his job and we found ourselves so thankful that we had not moved or made an offer on a different house yet.  It was easy to see God's hand of protection over us in that situation.  It was swift, clear and immediate.  We still had our home and the ability to pay our bills and meet our needs...God's provision was good.  Through the loss of Joe's job, God gave us a clear message of "stop" in the moving process. My head knew this was a good thing, but my heart was still very ready to move forward.  I was just going to have to wait.  I just had no idea how long my wait would be.

                  ...to be continued...