Still Learning...

I’m sorry I didn’t post anything last week. We’ve had a lot going on, and honestly I was mentally drained by it all and just didn’t feel like writing. Now I’m over it, and I promised to always share my truth…so I’m just going to keep it real today.

You know, God is pretty funny. I wrote the post about Him hurting your feelings…and then this week I got my feelings hurt. Bad. Twice.

As some of you may know, last fall Alex and I purchased a lot where we intended to build our dream house. We were led to the perfect lot within 24 hours of beginning our search, and we kept feeling confirmation that this was God’s plan for our family. We began to work on our design with a builder and hoped to break ground in February.

Those of you that know me personally, certainly understand that “submissive wife” isn’t a role I was born to play. I’ve been trying really hard over the last few years to admit when I’m in over my head and ask someone who knows more than me. Alex always says we make a good team, and it’s really so true. We do not have the same strengths, so we tend to take turns with decision making. In our house, I’m basically in charge of making sure everyone and everything looks good and keeping Xander alive while Alex is at work. When it comes to finances and cooking…Alex is in charge. For the last week or so, God had really been preparing me to follow Alex’s lead on this build. When he came home Wednesday and said “We need to talk,” my heart stopped for a second, but I wasn’t totally shocked. Earlier in the day, he had gotten back the estimated budget for the second design on our house plan. It wasn’t good news and he really felt like building the house of our dreams was still too far out of our financial comfort zone.

I melted down and threw a mini pity party. “I could really use a WIN right now.” and “I told God I would follow your lead, but I didn’t say I would be happy about it”…were among some of the really selfish things that came out of my mouth. Thankfully, my saint of a husband knows me well, and knew I wasn’t faulting him for the choice. He was as heartsick over it as I was. I actually agree with him 110%. This house is just too expensive and the sacrifices that we would have to make to have it? Totally not worth it.

Faced with new circumstances, we decided to peruse the real estate market again. We hoped we might find something with good bones that we could afford to renovate.

Thursday morning, a new listing popped up. THE PERFECT HOUSE. I mean…this thing seemed sent straight from Heaven just for us.

Great neighborhood. One level. Lots of windows and light. Well cared for. Room for an addition to give us the space we will want as our family grows. It even had some of the unique features that we had incorporated into the design for our build. All wrapped up in amazing 60’s charm that spoke straight to my contemporary, Brady Bunch loving heart.

We had our Realtor write up an offer IMMEDIATELY. We were so in love, we actually offered them more than list price!

That night we found out that other offers were coming in, but prayed ours would be strong enough to win. We cast our bid and left the rest up to God. At 1:00 Friday we got word that we had lost. Our dream house is now someone else’s dream house.

Crushed for the second time in 24 hours. My feelings weren’t just hurt…they were on a ventilator in the ICU.

Thankfully, God doesn’t care to hurt our feelings in order to give us what we need…which is usually even more than what we’re asking for. We’re trusting that is exactly what is going to happen for us in this situation.

Funnily enough, we weren’t sad at all yesterday about either of the things that wrecked us earlier in the week. We had a renewed excitement for our adventure and we know that God is going to blow our minds over this house! We’re now researching several different paths and praying God makes it clear to us which way will be best.