more news . . .

We’re buying a house!

Yep, it’s true!

We close on Friday.

I know, I know, you’re probably thinking, Wait, you haven’t been in your current house that long!  And I thought you loved your house!!

True and true.

Let me tell you all about it . . .

We had in our minds when we signed our lease back in October that this was a transition time for us.  Back then we didn’t know what we’d be doing or where we’d be living long term, so choosing to move here at all was a big leap of faith.  And oh, I’m so glad we did it.

This has been a wonderful house for us.  “The healing house” I call it sometimes, because it came to us as a quiet, restful haven after the storm of moving back from South Asia.  It was in this house that we began, slowly, to pick up the pieces.  To find ourselves again.  To pull all of our scattered things together from storage, to receive the container of furniture from South Asia, to consolidate and look around ourselves and take stock of what’s ours.  It was in this house I began to heal, in body and in spirit.

And along with it all, it was in this house that God confirmed our call to make downtown Columbia our permanent home.  What better way for Him to do it then allow us to live in downtown Columbia, while we followed this long and wind-y process to becoming a church planting family?  I remember standing in front of our PCA church planting assessors in February during an interview, hearing their question, Do you live in your target area?  And responding, with joy, We do! And we love it!

God brought us to the perfect spot.  We love our neighborhood.  We love our side-walked street that’s a front-row to all sorts of colorful personalities walking by.  We love our neighbors.  We love our location right off Main Street and our wide, shady front porch that’s regularly filled with neighbors and friends dropping by for a cup of coffee or glass of wine.

So many sweet memories in seven short months.

If all of this is true, why move?, you ask.

Well, you know, we considered not moving.  Considered it very strongly.  We’ve known from the beginning that if David took the job of church planter then we would buy a house in Columbia.  It’s time to put down roots, to make this place our home, just like the people in our little church have.

We had the option of buying this house and for months we imagined we would.  But, we wanted to look around, just to be sure.  We wanted to buy the right house, not just the first house we fell in love with.

So over the months David regularly checked Zillow.com for house listings.  Sometimes I looked over his shoulder.  Sometimes I couldn’t stomach the thought of another move and told him I didn’t want to see anything.  Sometimes I wanted to close my eyes tight and dig in my heels and stay, no matter what.

Then in April we decided together we were ready to check out some options.  We hired a realtor, Missy Miller, who also happens to be our friend, and whom we love.  We weren’t in any hurry and it was a fun process and we learned a lot.

We looked at nine houses total if you count this one, which I do, because Missy walked through it with us to help us think through the possibilities.  The houses were located in three neighborhoods, all within a 2-3 mile radius of where we live now.  We followed my father-in-law’s advice and looked at houses above our price range and below our price range.

There was a house on our street — two doors down from us — that for a brief span of time we were set on buying.  The price was great because it needed a lot of work.  But, we reasoned, in the end we’d have the exact house we wanted and live on a street we already know we love.

However, after a couple of sleepless nights on both our parts at the thought of a whole-house remodel and planting a church, we decided we were nuts.  We love the idea of renovating a house together, but this is just not the season of life in which to do it.  No way.

It was good decision-making experience because it taught us that what we really want is a house that’s more or less move-in-ready.  Which is not this current house either.  Our kitchen looks charming enough but is not very functional.  Almost no counter space, no dishwasher, and the washing machine hook-up is right next to the fridge which obviously is not ideal.  The whole kitchen needs to be renovated and updated, and ideally a walk knocked out to open it up some more.

For a few months we were excited by the prospect of a project like this, but once we started pricing everything and factoring in time for labor we got more and more tired.  Like I said, we’re pretty maxed-out-busy as it is right now, so we just don’t need the extra stress.

Second downside of our current house: the back yard.  It’s not just that it’s tiny, it is covered in shade by our various neighbors’ trees and it’s sloped and the enormous a.c. unit takes up a good quarter of it.  You know one of our desires is to grow more of our own food and have a yard for puttering around in, maybe a few chickens.  And this yard just doesn’t cut it.

So.  The house we’re buying is one we looked at on the very first afternoon out with Missy.  [Side note: ready for how we house-hunted with two preschoolers?  We brought my laptop with a movie and set them up on the living room floor of each house we looked at.  I highly recommend this.  Or getting a babysitter.]

So anyway, we saw the house—our house—that first day.  But, as David put it, we weren’t ready to see it yet.  We thought it was cute enough, but back then we had our hearts set on living in our current neighborhood, and if at all possible on our current street.

We pretty much wrote it off right away and moved on.

But then we decided not to pursue the renovation house.  And we had more and more trouble finding something we liked in our price range with a decent yard in our current neighborhood.  And that little house just stuck out in my mind the whole time.  I couldn’t help checking on it at least once a day on Zillow, just to make sure it was still around.

I started imagining the way our sofas would look in the living room.  I pictured cooking dinner in the kitchen and peering out into the backyard where David was picking vegetables from our raised beds.  I dreamed about paint colors and curtains and a space for homeschooling.

I told David, “I think this may be the house for us.”

So we decided to go back.  That afternoon, Missy showed us three other houses in the same neighborhood, then she took us to our house.  When we walked through it the second time, we knew.  We shut the laptop and told the kids, “Run all around and see if you like this house!”

We made an offer the very next day, and after some negotiations we had a contract.  We got an awesome deal, thanks to my husband’s bold negotiating skills.  The inspections have been done and we learned that the furnace and duct-work under the house need to be replaced before we move in.  Other than that and a little paint, it really is move-in ready!

That was over a month ago and we really haven’t looked back.  No second thoughts.  No middle-of-the-night panic attack wondering, What have we done???  Just a calm, cheerful feeling.

This week I think reality has set in and I’m experiencing that incredulous, glazed-over feeling of, Wait. We’re packing and moving. Again?  But I just know if we can make it through the next two weeks we’ll be very, very glad we did it.

I’m excited to tell you more.  I’m excited to post pictures for you after we close.  You’ll have to bear with me while I blog more about this house than I have before.  Because guess what: it’s our house!  Our very own first house.  I can’t wait!