Whirlwind Day!

Watch this campfire oil painting come to life in 2 minutes (time lapse)

Mellow music, marshmallows on a stick, and dancing flames – a fire can be welcoming and sentimental – childhood memories, family vacations, and warmth on a chilly evening… or, it can be devastating, ravishing, and life altering. Today’s was life altering, but in what looks to be a good way. Instead of a Dumpster fire, it was like a campfire on the last night of summer camp, when everyone sings sentimental songs and wishes they could be with their best buddies forever, but just around the corner summer will end, school will start back up, and the days toward adulthood will fly by.

A dear friend was thinking of me today and texted me. She has a spiritual gift of contacting me right when I’m going through a major life change, and is a calming force. I say “force” because her method of reassurance is helping me see a situation for what it truly is. This isn’t a passive kind of help, it’s the real kind that makes a difference.

Well, after some conversation about how things stand, a few things were meanwhile happening. One thing led to another and there was a flurry of calls, texts and e-mails between me, a realtor, and my husband. It all started when I got fed up with refreshing the rental listings screen yet again and finding nothing new. I wondered if the housing market in general was short on houses. So I checked homes for sale and found quite a few options. I wondered if we were too soon to give up on the possibility that we could buy a home sooner than planned.

I requested information about a house and was surprised to get a quick response. It turned out that this home had no garage, and my husband is a woodworker, so that’s a deal breaker for us. Of course if we truly had no where else to go, we’d do it, but we still have a short while to make something wonderful happen. It seems too early to give up and commit to a house that we don’t want. So, I explained this to the realtor who’d listed that house, and she started asking me what we were looking for.

I told her our situation, how disappointing the rental market is, and how we’d planned to buy next year (because my husband’s new job doesn’t start until June), but we have to vacate this rental by May 31. I said we can’t find a house to rent and we may need to see if we can buy a house earlier than we’d planned.

I’d imagined spending all of next year getting excited about the new house, saving money toward it, and organizing, packing, etc., then happily house hunting for as long as it took to find our perfect house. Because, every move we’ve ever made has been under a fast deadline with few choices and a fair amount of panic. I wanted a fun home buying experience. But, deep down I guess I knew that’s not how we roll.

We went the other direction- instead of less pressure, we’ll do MORE this time around. LOL, well, maybe that’s how the best of me comes out. I thrive under pressure. Even so, I’m happy that my friend got in touch with me today- she was holding me steady when all of this broke loose.

The realtor put my husband in touch with a local lender who got the ball rolling for us. It looks like we will be buying a house!!!! I’ll know more tomorrow, but my fingers are crossed and my prayers are lifted high! After years of this long journey and several detours, we may finally be HOME!!!!! I can hardly keep up with how fast my life is changing. Now it looks like the GOOD kind of change! Isn’t it wonderful how I knew that all along, and was completely calm and cool the whole time? HA HA HA, if you’ve been reading my blog you know better. 🙂

Still, there’s a long way to go from “working toward financing” and being settled into our new home. We haven’t even started looking at houses yet. So, easy now. I’ll see what tomorrow brings (but it’s okay to shout out a WOOT!). 😀 Thank you for your thoughts and prayers. Let’s bring ’em on home, keep praying!

I hope all of you are doing well. If you’re also dealing with unexpected changes, stay strong! God bless and keep you. May His face shine upon you and give you peace.