Moving: Into the home stretch

If all goes as planned, this afternoon make that late morning, I will skip my Thursday yoga class and we will go from home buyers to home owners as we close the deal on our new abode. After that, I can call it our "home." (I'm not superstitious but there's part of me that just can't make that linguistic leap until the paperwork is completed.)

Almost six months ago (176 days, if I were counting), I blogged about our old house in Oklahoma being for sale, and created my own wishlist for a dream house.  I quipped I might have to start looking, and with that flippant comment, we soon found ourselves semi-seriously hunting for houses.

I would have to say this has been a journey on many levels for me. It's been mostly ups (it's actually pretty fun to look at homes and try to see yourself moving into each one); a few downs (like when we lost out on a house I really really liked).  A lot of time and energy has gone into searching for houses and searching myself for answers:  Why do we (I) want a different house?  Why do we (I) want THIS house?  Is this a wise move for us at this time in our lives?  Am I running toward something good? Or am I running away from something I should stand my ground and face?  Am I strong enough to go through this, given our past experiences with home buying? Those are tough questions to ponder, and they've kept me up a few nights as I wrestled with the answers, and tested my reasons for pushing for a new/different address.  Top of the list was asking for God's guidance and direction, even if it meant accepting an answer of "no" or "not now."

There were a few times in this process I thought about throwing in the towel.  I began to doubt that we would find THE house at the price we were willing to pay, and had started to think about setting a deadline to wave the white flag and call off the search.  But on our way home from our spring break trip, we got the news that the house we had been waiting on the bank to make a decision was ours if we still wanted to pursue it. Did we want it?  Of course we did!

And so now, finally, the day we've been working toward is here.  After today, we'll no longer be hunters or buyers, but owners.  (Soon we hope to be sellers of our current house, but that's another story for another post or two...or ten!)  We hope friends and family will stop by for a visit.  If you want us to REALLY roll out the welcome mat, show up soon with a paint brush or moving dolly or an icy cold drink.  Or just bring yourself and come see us - and the sheep and chickens and horses and cattle and emus.  (And for those who are too far away to schlep over on a whim...some photos are on FB and new ones are coming soon.)

Happy homecomings,