The Move

So, we're all moved in to our new place. It was a chaotic move but we are moved. Anyone who knows us well, knows that we have moved...a lot in our life and had it down to a science. This last move? Not so much.

We are moved about 5 minutes from where we were renting and we had a month between when we closed on the house and needed to be out of our rental. So we thought that was a pretty good deal; we can move things over as we get packed and we'll have the bulk of things moved before the end of the month and basically just use the last couple of days to get all the big stuff out and moved over. Easy peasy!

Insert obnoxious buzzer here! That was a lovely dream while it lasted.

The reality was that we did move small loads of stuff over but it was "put stuff wherever you can find an empty spot and when the empty spots are filled, start piling upward". Also, we had a small amount of renovation work done after we closed on the house so we were wanting to have that work finished before we started moving in anything sizable or valuable. The renos were delayed by about a week due to weather, either rainy or super hot. To complicate things, I have worked every weekend through the summer so we didn't have the option of spending a day just moving things over and most of our friends were away on vacation or already had plans on the weekends. We did have some help from friends when they were available and we tried to move as much as possible when we had the extra bodies. It kept feeling like a never-ending move; every time we'd turn around it seemed like there was still more stuff to move. It was shocking how much stuff we had accumulated in 4 years! We thought we'd be ahead of the game when July 31 rolled around and we'd spend that day cleaning the rental place and unpacking at the house. We actually started cleaning the rental at 8:30pm on July 31 and finally flopped into bed, exhausted, with the last of stuff still out in the cars and our cats exploring their new home at 4:00am Aug. 1. The bed was still standing upright in the living room, the sheets were balled up somewhere in the chaos, the curtains were somewhere else but we needed to make-shift something in order to get a few hours of sleep. Eventually, we fell asleep around 5:00am.

When we awoke again after a slim four hour sleep to the sun shining brightly in our faces and to the unfamiliar sounds of the cats chasing each other on the laminate floors around their new home, we realized that we had been successful and we were all moved...albeit a chaotic mess but everything we owned was out of the other place and into our house.

Our house...that phrase has a different meaning now. Our house...the place we own, that we bought--not just the place someone else owns and we pay rent. We own a house. Wow. In 15 years of marriage, this is a first for us. It's been a dream for a few years now but we've just not been in a place to be able to buy for various reasons. This one came at the right time. We knew we'd be moving this summer whether we bought a house or not. The rental place was becoming too costly to heat in the winter and we were looking to reduce expenses with Jeff starting a 1-year online supernatural ministry school in September. (He has posted about it on Facebook some lately or you may have received his support letter.) We got this house for such a ridiculously low price that our mortgage payments are about half of what we were paying in rent and it should be easier to heat given that it is small and insulated. I'm sure many of you are thinking we're crazy for buying a house with Jeff going to part time hours with work so he can go to school but we believe that God's timing is on this. Jeff had a dream back in January from God and in it the Father revealed he should stay at his job for just a bit longer (he had actually put in his one month notice and retracted it after the dream) and a house would come of it! Father is so funny--since at that time we had been trying to save for years without any real success for a down payment, we had absolutely zero in the bank and I had hardly had any hours as a casual nurse for the previous month! But we believed what God said in the dream and literally within days my phone began to ring non-stop. I was so booked with shifts I had to actually turn some down! Then Jeff, who struggled through a serious back injury all last year and was just getting back on full duties saw his highway miles skyrocket---which was great since his back can handle long drives but too much hard labour at that point would have been difficult. In February, we had the best financial month in over three years--and one of the three best over the past five years (outdone only by two 5 week months). In 6 weeks we had almost 3000$ in the bank. It is amazing what God can accomplish in weeks that we cannot in years! On April 28th we had an accepted offer in on house in the area we wanted and at a great price! When we simply agree with what God reveals to us, it is amazing what can happen!

We've been in the house now almost a month and we're starting to settle in. We have had a few people over already (including a housewarming party on our new deck) and though there are a few things that still need to be tweaked to make them more functional, it is beginning to feel like home. As always, should you find yourself in our area and needing a place to stop in and rest, the welcome mat is out and as Motel 6 says in their commercials, "We'll leave the light on for you!"