On Buying a House

Our little colonial.

We bought one...or I guess I should say we're in the process of buying a home.  They accepted our counteroffer on Friday and I am honestly still in shock.

It has been bitter sweet.  We've been praying for awhile to know if this was the right step to take.  It's so far away from family and friends and buying a house seems so permanent.  I was hoping for the heavens to open and give me a resounding "Yes!  You need to be here!"  But that has never happened in my life, not for my decision to marry, not for my decision to serve a mission, only when my best friend Heather the Canuck and I were trying to decide if we should live in Moon Apartment F6 or G10, and after choosing F6 I couldn't get G10 out of my mind so we called back a day or so later and switched and gratefully ended up with fabulous roommates and   fabulous church friends.

The definitive "Yes" didn't come this time either, so we decided to move forward since Jason has such a good job here.  It's been a dream of mine to live in the East ever since visiting it in high school and falling in love with the green and the architecture and the history of it all.  I even dreamed of having a house like the Faucheux's who built a colonial with a wrap around porch in my little hometown.  It must have been in my blood.  We decided if God didn't want us here, He would let us know along the way.  And not that obstacles mean you shouldn't be making the decision, but none came.  In fact, things just happened so quickly and smoothly.

Our real estate agent told us that you can look at one house and you can look at one hundred houses, but you just know the house when you walk in it.  You can picture your family there.  I thought she was crazy and didn't believe her and I was starting to worry that we wouldn't find one and would be wasting her time (we'd only looked at six houses, mind you).  On Wednesday, though, I had her show us a house on a whim since I was taking Jason out of work to look at another one and thought we should have at least two to justify the excursion, and... it happened.  I knew it when we walked in and saw the stairs leading up to the second floor to the bedrooms.  The wood was dark and homey.  I could even envision grandchildren running up those stairs. There was a coat closet to the left where I could see myself putting friends' coats.  I pictured our piano in the front room and warm fires in the living room that could also be a playroom, that could also serve as a guest room.  So many possibilities.  It even has a shower on the first floor so my aging-all-too-quickly mother won't have to crawl over a bathtub.  It was waiting for our family.  And to further the rightness of it all, Jason and I both loved it.  Our tastes never align like that.  But they did on this house.

I couldn't wait until the weekend, I didn't even feel like we had time to go back for a second showing just to make sure.  I emailed our agent the next morning and told her we needed to make an offer.  She came to our apartment that afternoon to begin the process.  We made an offer.  The seller rejected it that day and made a counteroffer.  We made a counteroffer that night and before we went to bed we began talking about how high we would really go and how much the house was really worth to us.  When our agent called the next morning, we were sure there would be another counteroffer, but no.  The seller had accepted our counteroffer and we have been making plans for our little house ever since.  It's so nice to finally feel like we are settling down somewhere.  It's given me new energy and something to look forward to.  Every once in awhile, though, the bitter sneaks in and I miss my family and friends knowing that we are probably here to stay and am I really ready for this and what if Lily and Grace are sad because they will probably only see family once a year and what if they have a hard time and don't make any friends out here and what if Jason dies and I can't make payments on the house and...I decided buying a house is a huge act of faith, and sometimes we need to walk into the dark and trust that God will provide the light.