"A House is a House for Me"

I spent a good part of this week holding my breath on a beautiful home and property.  I am happy to announce we went smoothly under contract and it will be just weeks before we call this dream home.  I am once again breathing smoothly but now unable to sleep out of giddiness, excitement and nerves as we face this new adventure.

It is interesting how sometimes our disappointments play a part in our lives.  You see, when we missed out on the log cabin home I spent a good day crying, moping then gardening.  That was the push we needed, we expanded our search radius and Paul took me on a driving tour of 19 new homes for sale. 

Filled with children, we spent over 12 hours in our van.  We drove through thunderstorms, along all sorts of bumpy country roads and bought several ice cream cones a long the way.  At the height of a storm we finally came upon the home of our choice.  This was our last stop, probably around 9:30 pm and in the dark, drenched in rain and thunder booming around me, I tip toed around this unfamiliar property with a sense of familiarity.  I knocked on the front door then was immediately knocked off the front porch when a huge crash of thunder and lightening startled me from over head.  The owner was not home but we drove up and down the street a few times to get "a feel".  We made an appointment for a showing first thing in the morning and I was immediately smitten.

The home itself is not big, it is an old farm house but fully restored and full of charm.  We are trading room inside for room to run and live outside.  My mom is in town and when she toured it with me yesterday for inspections she called it a "child's paradise".  I love these intertwined maples and the "love swing" that sways below.

In addition there are over 20 acres complete with a barn, stables, fenced pastures, a stocked pond, vineyard, alfalfa field and garden.  I am sure the boys will be spending much of their summers doing this:

We are hoping to finish a rec room above one of the barns before winter.  We are hoping to do a lot of things but in reality we don't really know what we are doing.  That is the fun, that is the adventure and that is the dream we have been in visioning for almost 3 years now.  I can't believe it is finally upon us, it has been worth the wait.

But I'm glad I did not know the timeline that would be involved because I probably would have chickened out.  We endured living in a house on the market for 9 months (showings at least every week!), then living in my parents basement for 5 months (that was actually quite fun), and renting a small home in Michigan for 18 months (which served its purpose in teaching me I did not need thousands of sq feet to live happily).  

I can't say these months, or years actually, were lived with graceful patience on my part.  My dear sisters, friends and especially Paul were the sounding boards for my endless lamentings of feeling "unsettled".  At one point I even had a dream that I was Sariah and begun murmuring at Paul for being a visionary man leading our family into the wilderness to wander.

Somewhere along the way my sister Cheryl gave me a copy of this lovely book:

I read it often to my children and would sometimes reach both laughter and tears as we neared the end reading:

How peaches are houses for peach pits

and sometimes are houses for worms;

How trashcans are houses for garbage

and garbage makes houses for germs;

And envelopes, earmuffs and eggshells

And bathrobes and baskets and bins

And ragbags and rubbers and roasters

And tablecloths, toasters and tins....

And once you get started in thinking this way,

It seems that whatever you see

Is either a house or it lives in a house,

And a house is a house for me!

A book is a house for a story.

A rose is a house for a smell.

My head is a house for a secret, 

A secret I never will tell.

A flower's at home in a garden.

A donkey's at home in a stall.

Each creature that's known has a house of its own

And the earth is a house for us all.

I certainly learned that I can be at home anywhere on Earth, that being "grounded" is beyond a physical state.  But the greatest lesson I will take from this experience is that of the loving hand our Father in Heaven plays in our lives, that His purposes are wise and our prayers are answered.