The House: Part One

Scott and I have been married for 19 years. For about 15 of those years, we have driven around and looked online at properties with land. We knew we always wanted to be on some acreage, but nothing ever felt quite right. I remember being in Scott’s office looking at a property with over one hundred acres in Wyoming. Yes. Wyoming. It was beautiful. But, it wasn’t the one. After seeing those rolling hills and open spaces but not feeling it, I told Scott, we will know-when-we-know-when-we-know.

Flash forward to the summer of 2021. We finished renovating the kitchen and master bathroom in our current home in June. Come July, we were tearing out wood floors and some walls fixing a broken pipe from Snowmaggedon in Texas in February. They finished ripping the floors out on a Friday afternoon (of course). Scott and I looked at the job and both thought, “There is no way we can stay here while they fix this monstrosity.” After a sleepless Saturday night, I woke up motivated to find our family a rental close to the boys’ schools. I told Scott and he asked me if I wanted to go for a drive to look at them that evening. No. No I don’t want to go on a drive. I want to go to bed. But, I decided to trade my sleep for one of our iconic drives.

After we drove by the few rentals I found, I asked Scott to drive us through our favorite neighborhood. We all have one of those: that place you drive through dreaming and scheming of ways to move there. We finished our rental route close to our old house so I didn’t think Scott would make the trek to the coveted neighborhood. But, he did. That’s when we saw it. The house that we would know-when-we-know-when-we-know. We both looked at each other and knew exactly what the other was thinking.

A few weeks before the drive that changed our lives, I was sitting on my friend and neighbor’s porch watching our boys ride bikes around the park in front of our houses. The sun was setting when our other neighbor/friend came home. We’ve been friends and neighbors for years. Our boys have literally grown up together. At this time, I had absolutely no intention of moving. We had just finished renovating our current house. No way I was going to leave the place where my babies grew into little men and I had given my blood, sweat, and tears getting it exactly the way I wanted it. But, in that moment when the skies turned dark, she said it: “Just keep going until God says stop.” You see, her family was the first one from our pack that had decided to move. She went on a fishing trip in Florida and stumbled upon a home she couldn’t pass up. We were all sad to see one of the Sand Lot crew go. Never in a million years did I think our boys would be the next two to leave.

I took that saying and pocketed it. I knew it was good. About a week after that little neighbor porch sit is when we stumbled upon the house. We pulled up to the for sale sign, looked around, and said, “Hmmmmm.” We pulled the house up on MLS, looked at the interior pictures and said, “Hmmmmmm.” We both knew. I honestly believe we both knew in that moment sitting out front of that house in Scott’s truck on that hot Sunday evening that this would become our house even though it was unbelievable. We both knew and didn’t need to say a word.

We called our realtor on Monday. Walked the house on Tuesday. Made an offer on Wednesday morning. By 10pm Wednesday night, the house was ours.

We hadn’t even thought about putting our other house on the market. We were in the throws of fixing the floors. The whole process was a whirlwind. An “only God” moment. We just kept going until God said stop, but He never did.

Back in December, we tried to buy a similar house about thirty minutes away. It had a little more land, but we would be ripping our boys out of their communities in order to do this. We were beat out with another office and I felt like I had lost the dream: the dream to one day be on some land tending to some animals and a garden. The house we lost felt like something for me finally. I surrendered my life and my career when I decided to stay home 14 years ago. A decision I do not regret and hold onto for the gift that it is. But, if I am being honest, giving your life up for others is hard; probably one of the hardest things I’ve done. It takes daily surrender. Totally worth it. Challenging none-the-less.

Turns out, the house we lost that devastated me set us up for the house that became the we’d-know-when-we-know-when-we-know house. Things we did to prepare our offer on that first property enabled us to do what we did with this house. Funny how God works.

This is the first part of the crazy story. I promise I gets even better, if you can believe that. I want to leave you with this before we head into part two….God prepared me for this place. There were many hurts and disappointments. Moments when I felt hopeless and unseen; my prayers unanswered. I had so many dreams and many of those dreams broken into pieces along the way. I thought this moment would never come. Yet, here I am. Life will most likely not look like the screen play we have in our heads. But, there is always hope because His story is greater than any story we could write on our own.

“And I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” Psalm 27:13

Love & Blessings,

Meg