Well over a year ago, we heard about a house on county island near our home that would be coming up for sale soon. It's always been one of our dreams to live on more land to have room to run and play, to enjoy the outdoors, and to return to raising chickens. We started working with a realtor to look into the home, but to make it what we would want it to be would have required a lot of work and money and the timing just didn't feel right. Since that time, we've been on the lookout for something that would fit our family well. We made a list of priorities and pros and cons of many different housing situations and started watching the housing market. In December, we expanded our search criteria and that led us to a home that we felt would be a really good fit for our family. After negotiations, we were under contract contingent on us selling our home. In January, we did all the work to quickly get our home up for sale. We had a lot of showings so I spent my days cleaning the house top to bottom and keeping kids out of the house whenever someone came by. Three weeks of that! It was exhausting work to keep our home spotless for so long. There were a few discouraging days where it felt like it wouldn't work out. However, we got a good offer on our home! Unfortunately though, it literally came 24 hours too late. Because within that 24 hour time period the home that we were trying to buy had two backup offers placed on it and the owners decided to go with one of the offers. So we had sold our house, but we had no where to go. I was a little bit stressed about that fact.
During that time period, I found comfort in one thing. When we had heard the news that the house we were trying to buy fell through I knelt on my bed for a nice long talk with Heavenly Father. When I finished my prayer, I felt like I should read from the Book of Mormon right where I had left off the day before. I read a verse that popped out at me and I knew it was my answer from a loving Heavenly Father who was very much aware of me and my family.
I read in 1 Nephi Chapter 9:
5 Wherefore, the Lord hath commanded me to make these plates for a wise purpose in him, which purpose I know not.
6 But the Lord knoweth all things from the beginning; wherefore, he prepareth a way to accomplish all his works among the children of men; for behold, he hath all power unto the fulfilling of all his words. And thus it is. Amen.
Nephi was talking about his own circumstances and why he had to make this second set of plates, but I felt that God was also talking to me through these words--there was a wise purpose for everything happening the way it was. Like Nephi, I didn't know that purpose at the time, but the Lord did. The Lord knows everything even from the beginning. And he always prepares a way. He has all power. And so I can trust in Him and His wisdom.
Fast forward a month's time and I understood that purpose. We needed to be here just a little bit longer for some very personal reasons. But we didn't know what was going to happen so we spent the next few weeks stressfully exploring every single housing option out there. Every option! And then, miraculously, the owners of the house we were originally trying to buy reached out to us. The second offer they had accepted fell through so they asked if we were still interested. We had to stick with a longer close date to accommodate the buyers of our home, but it was all going to work out.
And it has. On May 1st, we closed on both houses. We said goodbye to our lovely home on Carob Court and hello to a new house ready for us to make it our home.
On our last night in our lovely Arizona Carob Court home, we swam together as a family and enjoyed the pool and the backyard that we had designed and built. And loved for almost four years.
Goodbye home we loved!!
Hello to our new home!!
It was such happy relief and excitement when we got the word that we were officially the new owners. There was a time when I really thought it was all a dream and that it would never actually work out. But I didn't need to worry, everything came together in the end.
We all had various aspects of the new house that we were looking forward to and we often talked about them in excited anticipation. Things like closet shelves and drawers, a basketball hoop, bedroom space, etc. The one thing that Layla was most excited about was this little bridge in the backyard. As soon as we got in the house, she ran into the backyard to see her bridge! Love, love, love.
There were so many mixed emotions for me during the move. To say it was hard to say goodbye to our Carob home is a huge understatement. But a house is made a home by the people in it, and this family of mine is all together in our new house safe and happy and that is what is most important. Every day that we are here it starts to feel a little bit more like home and right where we need to be.
