Lenten Reflection: Sixteen Going on Seventeen
… or the ups and downs of house hunting during Lent.
It’s nine am and I open up my laptop to get the Brain Highways materials for the day, which are located in my email. My inbox is a dangerous place to visit these days. At any given moment, there could be one or more emails with new houses on the market, leading me down a rabbit trail of what-ifs, looking at pictures, driving times, and the Google map of the street. All of which could leave me permanently distracted and excited with the possibility or, more often than not, feeling despair at yet another house that is not an option for us for one reason or another.
This was one of those moments. I saw the email. I knew it would set us back if I took the time to look at it, but I also knew that my mind would be fixated on the email until I could look at it. I choose to set things back so I could be present later.
I had resolved at the beginning of Lent to not let these emails affect me so much. True, I am checking my email less often, and while I have thought about it less overall, I still think about it a lot. How can one not when you have a set move out date of July 1st and you know it can take six to eight weeks to close on a house? You don’t want just any house — you have five kids, a church to be close enough to, and a longing for a large yard (is five acres too much to ask? Yes. Yes it is…).
And so I’ve been on an emotional yo-yo.
Since the start of Lent we have made an offer on two houses. Obviously we got neither. The first, I didn’t really want, but it was the closest to what we wanted that we’d seen in a month. The second one, I did really want, but it still had some big downfalls (um, one bathroom!). I can’t but hope that the saying will be true: Three time’s the charm.
I click on the email and the picture pops up. It’s gorgeous. Four bedrooms and four bathroom. Large square footage. It’s in an area we like. It’s barely in our price range, which means, when all is said and done, it’s too expensive. I click on it anyway to see more.
It’s a classic home built in 1910 — beautiful wood floors, classic wide trim, beautiful staircase. The kitchen is big with a large butler’s pantry with built ins. The window above the sink show the house next door and my heart sinks. I prefer none of my windows look onto another house, but I know that’s unrealistic. But the kitchen window — I just want to see yard. I brush that aside and keep looking. The whole house is beautiful and amazing! Huge walk in closet with the master bedroom (which would probably make a great office as we don’t need all that space just for a closet!), claw foot tub in one bathroom, a third story, and finished basement even! The yard is small, but it’s fenced in which for whatever reason makes it feel better. Maybe it’s the privacy it brings. I notice the pictures were taken during summertime and not recently. Definitely adds to the appeal.
I looked over the numbers — something I’ve learned in this whole process. I noticed how high the taxes are. I used Zillow’s calculator to estimate the monthly mortgage payment considering the small down payment we’d be able to make… yikes! It definitely was not affordable for us.
My heart fell.
In retrospect, it feels silly. Did I really want that house? Barely a yard and with more space than we have furniture to fill? No, but I do want something beautiful, classic, and special. And it just reminded me again that I have no guarantee that I will get that.
My husband and I have moved around a lot in our sixteen years of marriage. Sixteen times to be exact. Most of that moving happened in the first four years of marriage when he played minor league baseball and we moved about three times a year. More during seminary with a move each summer. This year we will move for the seventeenth time before our seventeenth anniversary.
One April, I was pregnant with our first. We had an amazing situation come up for us as we drove from Spring Training in Florida to Virginia where he’d been assigned. We had been there the year before and were part of a wonderful mission church. They knew we were coming back. The priest’s sister-in-law had a brand new condo that she wouldn’t be moving into until the fall and offered to have us live there. It was minutes from the baseball field and had two bedrooms (perfect for grandparents to stay in after the baby was born). She even had furniture in it!
Yet in May, he was sent to Maine. The powers that be never let you know if you’re being sent to a different team temporarily or for good. I stayed in Virginia a week or so, then decided to join him in Maine. The team gave us three nights in a hotel to give us time to find a place. For this particular team, there were host families that had signed up to host baseball players for the summer. Since we were coming well over a month after the other players, it seemed as if all the host families had been taken.
Our last night in the hotel came and went. I remember going to Panera while my husband was at the field, all our belongings in our Saturn Vue, feeling so very homeless. That night we stayed in a cute apartment above a garage where a teammate was staying. It seemed like the perfect place for a young couple about to have their first baby. Certainly better for them than a single guy. I remember sobbing in the bathroom, crying out to God. It felt so unfair.
The next day was Sunday which meant the game was in the afternoon. Afterwards we went to a park and split a Seadog Biscuit — an ice cream sandwich made with two giant chocolate chip cookies. I didn’t really enjoy it and was feeling depressed. We were trying to decide where to sleep that night. Did we go back to the teammate’s place? Getting a hotel was a very costly idea since in those days we had next to nothing. My husband gets a phone call. It was one of the host families! They have room. They said we could come by that night and check it out.
We showed up around seven. They were a couple about ten years older than us, pregnant with their first, a couple months behind me. Their whole upstairs was available. It had a few bedrooms and a full bath. They asked us when we’d like to come stay.
Sheepishly we said, “Can we start tonight?”
We ended up in Maine for the rest of the summer. Although we are no longer in touch with that couple, I am forever grateful to them and to God for that situation. It turned out so much better that that small apartment. I had a friend in the woman and so much support that I didn’t know I’d need as a brand new mom.
When I think about the sixteen other times God has provided a place for us to live — and this situation in particular, I wonder how I can doubt.
And yet I do.
All of those other times of waiting and praying stretched my faith and made space for me to grow in my faith and my relationship with God. I know that if something came up quickly for us, and we got it, I’d be praising God and sighing with relief that I didn’t have to go through a period of growth again. But then I wouldn’t have really grown.
I think there is blessing in both situations: God answering a prayer right away or God saying gently, “Not yet.”
For my husband and I, it seems God usually chooses the rough, difficult path of waiting. And while it is so hard and I want to resent it, deep down I know this season too will pass and I’ll be able to look back and see the blessing that it was and the growth that it brought.
In my better moments, I get excited to see what wonderful way God is going to provide for us that we cannot possibly see right now. In my lesser moments, I feel scared and despair. But God is so good. Even before He answers our prayer, He does not let me stay scared. He gives me moments of peace that surpasses understanding and relief from the aching.
It’s still a yo-yo. Up and down, up and down. The “almost-but-not-quite-right” houses send me down, God lifts me back up. He never leaves me, but sometimes I turn away from Him.
I don’t know how this seventeenth time of God providing just the right place for us will end. But I know it will, and I’ll have one more story to add to the other sixteen.
