Home

When we moved here to Newville, California in 2010, I had the chance to buy a new house, to upgrade our lifestyle.  We wanted "property," not just another cookie cutter subdivision house.  We insisted on a pool, and enough bedrooms for our kids.  Oh, the houses we saw.  The gorgeous kitchens with granite counter-tops, cabinets made of beautiful honey-colored wood, shining stainless steel appliances . . . . sigh.   We didn't get a-one of 'em.  God seemed to have other plans.  All our offers were rejected, or someone else beat us to it (once with a lower offer, but a faster realtor).  It felt like time was running out.  Our family was separated, with Daddy living here while the rest of us still lived in Oldville,  and if we didn't get going soon we would miss the start of the upcoming school year in our new city.

Daddy would preview homes and I would bring the kids down to see them with the realtor every couple of weeks.  One week he sent me a list of homes to see with the realtor including this reposessed home with hideous interior pictures and an indoor pool.  WHO WANTS AN INDOOR POOL IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA???  That definitely didn't fit in with my fantasies of sitting poolside with an iced tea and a magazine while the lil darlings splashed around in the sunshine.

All it took was the gate.  The house had me at the gate.  Not a shiny new gate with fancy keypads and intercoms, either.  A rusty, broken gate with no form of communication to the house, which our little bitty realtor had to shove open with her shoulder and slide along the track, propping it open with a rock so it wouldn't slide back shut on our cars as we drove through.  

From the driveway I called Daddy and said, "I WANT THIS ONE."  He said, "Well, OK, but maybe you should go inside first.  It needs a lot of work."  And I said, "OK, but I WANT THIS ONE.  I'm just saying."

So we bought it, and it turned out the romance of an huge old house with a lot of cool features and also a lot of broken, rusty features, 30 year old carpet, and rats, was not quite living up to my expectations.  Well, basically the husband was not living up to my expectations because renovations have continued at a snail's pace in the nearly two years since we bought the place.   But sometimes when  a new person comes over, they see the house as I did two years ago--all the beauty and promise, and none of the ugly 80's fixtures that have yet to be updated, none of the relentlessly growing weeds and dead fruit trees and overgrown cactus. 

And so tonight I sit down to write this post in the wake of a visit from one of those appreciative people who has reminded me that this is where the Lord chose for us to be.  He could have made any one of those other houses come through, but He didn't.  He chose this home for us, this home that I fell in love with at first sight.  And sometimes just as in a marriage we need to be reminded of how we felt when we first fell in love, so too with my home I need to be reminded of that.  I am finally confident that we are where the Lord wants us to be, and that if I am patient and seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, all the contentment of my heart will be provided.