Thanks to the brilliance of Time Hop (and I mean brilliance), I got a cool little reminder from five years ago
last week. It was cryptic…even I had to
consider the timing to figure out what I meant.
“…giving up a dream,” is what I wrote, since at that point Facebook
statuses began with “Laura is…” What
dream? Why so dramatic? Well at that point, we’d been looking at
houses for close to a year. Our two bedroom,
1000-square-foot on a good day, no-back-yard starter house was obviously not a
place we felt we should stay much longer, so we branched out. We looked outside of Fort Thomas, but never
really felt right about the schools. We
looked at no less than 5000 total dumps in Fort Thomas, and a few really nice
houses that we couldn’t remotely afford.
We almost built a house in Cold Spring, panicked because of the traffic,
then almost bought a market home in Fort Thomas (but not the school
district). Ultimately, we realized we
were financially in over our heads and backed out. And then James found it: a lovely brick ranch
on one of the prettiest streets in town.
It was totally dated on the inside, but it was clean and had a large
lot. It was pricey, but we could just
barely make it…if we didn’t have a second kid and if no one lost a job. We went under contract…we haggled over the
inspection report, and ultimately neither one of us had peace about the price and
the amount of work that had to be done.
We walked away, and I muttered unhappy things about never finding a
house that nice on a street that nice in Fort Thomas ever again. I was crushed. We would be living on Brentwood with a cliff
in the backyard forever. I really did
not see any other option. I gave up the
dream and posted it on Facebook.
Fast forward six months.
A house popped up for sale on the same street, but much closer to the
cul-de-sac. It had three bedrooms
instead of four, and it was a bi-level and I said I’d never live in a
bi-level. It was also disgustingly dirty
and terribly dated. BUT, the backyard
was far nicer than the other house, and as a short sale, the house was half of
what we were going to pay six months earlier. Most of the
work it needed was cosmetic, and the space was perfect for kids. We went under contract and waited, the way
you wait when you buy a short sale. Two
weeks into our wait, I found out I was pregnant with Caleb. If we’d bought the first house, we’d have
been sunk financially. We waited some
more and I threw up a lot, and ultimately we got the keys to a house that, even
in rotten condition, was way out of our price range. And we got it without increasing our monthly
mortgage payment from our starter home.
It took a ton of work, and there were two stressful years as landlords
while our old house didn’t sell. (But
then it did…to the tenants who got to live in the home for two years until they
were financially ready to buy. And even
that arrangement came about because someone did something crappy to us and God turned into good in the just
the right timing.) This house payment
walked us through almost a year on one income, unpaid maternity leave, another
surprise pregnancy, and still more unpaid leave. Had we bought the other one, we would be
renting and waiting for our credit to recover from foreclosure right now. And yes, we gave up one bedroom and some
pretty cool neighbors, but we got a far better yard, an attached garage, and
some other really awesome neighbors. And
most of all, we got two precious babies that were WAY out of our price
range. God took away the dream that
would have harmed us and gave us the exact same thing, only better.
“For I know the plans
I have for you,” declares the Lord. “Plans
to prosper you and not to harm you.
Plans to give you a hope and a future.”
Several people have unknowingly prayed Jeremiah 29:11 over me recently, and I
choose to believe that right now God is planning to prosper me and not to harm
me. Just because I have to go back to
school now, just because the kids have to go to daycare now, does not mean it
will be that way forever. It doesn't mean it will be that way for a year. It doesn't mean that I'm selling out my dream, or that I'm too wimpy to step out in faith. God
is lining up His plan in ways that I cannot imagine. I choose to believe. And while I wait, I choose to be wise about the ways I use my time and resources.
I am still sad. I think God allows that. And I'll probably hover somewhere between despondent and hysterical in those first weeks when we all fall apart. Still, He gave me this dream for a reason. And I don't believe that reason was to dash my spirit with defeat.
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