This is part two of my whirlwind story about my family buying and selling a house. To recap, our friends from church found out their neighbor was getting his house ready to sell and asked if we wanted it. We contacted the homeowner (Bill) for a tour and he connected us with his agent, who was also his friend. To read part one, click here.
Each year, Garth and I choose a Bible verse to meditate on to mark not only the beginning of a new year but also our wedding anniversary. This year, we chose Proverbs 3:24:
When you lie down, you will not be afraid; when you lie down, your sleep will be sweet. (NIV)
We make no plans or assumptions for what the verse will mean. We only choose what feels like words we might need, and let ourselves notice them in the context of how our lives unfold that year.
And now, the rest of the story.1
The following Monday, Bill’s real estate agent/friend came to our house. We felt sure that he’d laugh in our faces and call us crazy, but instead he took a look around and said, “This house would sell no problem, I think this could work.” We sat down at the dining room table and talked for about half an hour about how if things didn’t work out, we could take our house off the market even after signing a purchase agreement. We weren’t going to be left homeless.
“Mind if we put a coming soon sign outside today?” he asked.
We signed a pile of paperwork—a purchase agreement for the new house, sales contracts and legal disclosures for the old one—and when we he left that night, there was a sign in our yard announcing that it was for sale. Our kids were at my in-laws’ church camp for the week, so we kept it quiet until we could tell them we were selling our house.
The agent set us up with the seller’s inspector, and I showed up that Thursday morning and popped in at my friend Christine’s for coffee. Then I walked across the yard next door for the inspection. I wondered, “Could this be my new life?” On my way to the front door I noticed peony bushes in the front yard, and I could have cried. I had planted some at our house and they nearly died in the drought, but they managed to survive, though they had yet to produce a flower for me. And here were three peony bushes with fluffy pink flower puffs waving to me from the front landscaping.
The inspection went well with no major red flags for a house we had agreed to buy “as-is.” It would undoubtedly be a bit of a project, but nothing that had us running the other way.
Back at home, I was spending my week prepping and painting the front porch. The wood had been rotting and the paint flaking since our first year there, and we had finally found someone who could fix it. So we scheduled construction on our front steps and got the rest of our spindle porch ready with a fresh coat of paint. Unfortunately, rain kept setting us back on this project.
My mom came and packed up the kids’ winter clothes and some toys to store at her house until our move. When Garth got home each night he’d pack a few boxes. I also made a mistake that resulted in us needing to start painting our entire kitchen the night before our first showing (I couldn’t find the paint for the kitchen to touch up a couple small spots—it was in the basement, but I was blind to it from stress and exhaustion—I did, of course, find it two days before we moved out, after finishing painting the whole entire kitchen). We were a freak show.
After four days on the market and six showings, we didn’t have any offers. Our agent decided to lower the asking price by $9k, which was basically the minimum amount we needed to make this all work. The day after we got professional photos posted online, I shared the link to our house on Facebook, asking friends to share it. I was spending a rainy day inside painting the kitchen while the kids watched way too much TV when I got a message from an old friend. More than an old friend, he had been best friends with my high school ex-boyfriend.
He wrote, “I’ve been looking for a house in the area and yours looks perfect. I really like the pictures.” He called his agent and booked a showing for the next day. I thought, there’s no way my ex-boyfriend’s friend is going to help us sell this house.
We were down to one more day before the house we wanted to buy hit the market. It was listed as “coming soon” and already had five showings lined up for its first day live. We needed an offer. A good one.
My friend’s agent had told our agent that they were writing an offer. So when another agent called to say they were getting together an offer, our agent said, “Well, just so you know, they have a high school friend who is interested and he’s also getting an offer ready. Tell them to make sure it’s good.”
Later, our friend’s agent called to say since he has a Veteran loan (which makes buying an old house massively difficult for everyone involved), he changed his mind. But the other family didn’t know that. Our agent called and said, “I probably shouldn’t say anything yet, but you should be getting an offer tonight. A good one. I’m really excited.”
By 9pm, we had an offer for our initial asking price plus all closing costs. They also asked to close within a month (you may remember our purchase agreement required closing within 60 days). Everything we needed.
More than we asked or dared to imagine.
Friday morning, the house we were buying went live on the MLS as “contingent.” All showings were cancelled.
The following Tuesday was our buyers’ inspection. That night, while putting the kids to bed, we discovered the toilet was leaking into the kitchen ceiling. Just after scheduling a plumber and water leak mitigation team, our agent contacted us to let us know the buyer inspection found a crack in the sewage line for our house. They still wanted to buy it, but they wanted $5,000 in closing costs to pay for the repair.
For the rest of the week we felt a sense of foreboding with the whole situation. Our kitchen was covered in plastic with four industrial (heat) fans and a dehumidifier, our main bathroom was partially torn up, and our insurance denied the claim for the whole thing.
The house that had felt like a haven started feeling like it was spitting us out. And the piling up expenses had us feeling this whole plan was about to fall through.
It was under these circumstances, with three weeks till close, that I left my family for the weekend for the Cultivate Retreat with The Way Back to Ourselves2 (a trip I had booked before the house saga began). After a harrowing journey to get there, I got to spend a weekend feeling what it’s like to be in a safe and encouraging community. While I was feeling a strong sense of trepidation about celebrating all the invitations into community, I felt God’s call to “enter the garden.” That place where we go to walk with God and enjoy peace, to take in beauty, to rest, and to put our hands to the work of tending—cultivating.
We moved into our first house just as the world was shutting down due to COVID-19. The weekend we moved in I had an unexpected and confounding falling out with my business and writing partner, and I ended up having to let that part of my life and identity go in the weeks that followed. In the midst of all that loss, grief, and uncertainty, without the ability to be around a community who could bear witness to it, I felt held by our home. Garth was home for those first 9 weeks, paid, because chiropractic care wasn’t something he could offer remotely. We got lucky that option was available to us. We were able to make our house a cozy nest to hunker down and wait to host our people once life opened up again.
I the place I rested for days at a time after we did begin gathering again. It’s the place I recovered from panic attacks that I had each time I went out to spend time with new friends. It’s the place I learned to love and not fear neighbors who are different from me in all kinds of ways—and the place I learned to investigate my biases and discomfort. It was the place where my dream died, and where I began to dream again. It’s the place we lived the longest our whole adult lives, and the place we watched (from relative safety) the whole world fall apart.
While I was at the writing retreat, friends from church showed up with meals for my family so they could survive without a kitchen for the weekend. My parents sent money that Garth ended up not needing to use. I returned with a renewed sense that I am actually valued and beloved. Getting the time with other writers who were as excited to be in my presence as I was to be in theirs while my family was receiving care from our home community felt both unreal and grounding. A part of me was healed by it. And I was able to notice ways I already had healed.
With two weeks to go, our agent got us in touch with his friend who could patch the ceiling in our kitchen. That same week, construction on our porch repairs were also finished. I spent those final weeks painting the kitchen ceiling and the front steps to the porch, just in time for the new owners to enjoy.
You saw that my byline mentioned “white male privilege.” While we have no doubts God brought this all together because of the unplanned, unexpected, too-good-to-be-trueness of this whole thing, we were also caught up in the good graces of a group of well-connected, retirement aged, middle-class white men. Being ourselves a white married couple with (undeniably cute) kids, everyone involved really wanted to help us once they met us. I could give all the credit to God and our being palpably good people, but I know better. I will credit God and the professed faith of the men involved that we weren’t taken advantage of in this situation, but at the end of the day, we fit a social image that they liked and felt comfortable with, and therefore they wanted to help us.
I know that if any of the boxes we check weren’t true of us, this all would have been so much harder and may very well not have worked out.
In those last two weeks before closing, Garth got a call from our mortgage company saying that their appraisal of our house wasn’t as high as the seller’s appraisal. The problem was that our lender would not pay out a loan for any amount higher than their own appraisal.
Once again, we worked out our budget and decided if it came to it, we could pay up the $7,000 difference. Alternately, the sellers could agree to drop their asking price, but we felt that was a long shot.
“Will God do this one last thing for us?” I asked Garth.
If they dropped their asking price, it would mean a lower down payment and a couple hundred dollars saved per month on our mortgage.
Finally, the day before we pre-signed for the sale of our home, the sellers and our lender came to an agreement. We would split the closing costs that the sellers had planned to pay. And they would lower their asking price.
God did the thing.
We are now in the house where we plan to stay for the next 20 years. I’m writing this from my new little office that is also our music studio (surrounded still by stacks of unpacked boxes).
Of course, we know things happen. We can plan on staying for 20 years and life can fall apart in ways we’d never see coming. But we also know we can make it through hard things. We have before. I’m learning to relish enjoying the good parts of life so I don’t regret missing out on the opportunity when the hard times come.
One of the verses we chose to have read at our wedding was Proverbs 16:9:
The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps. (ESV)
This verse has guided how we approach our lives. We get to make our plans, but we don’t grasp tightly, we don’t force, we don’t push for our own way even when we plead with God to let the cup pass. And by allowing God’s leading, our hands have been open to receive what comfort, goodness, and blessing God has for us in each season. We’ve learned to take responsibility for our own part and our foibles, and to trust God with the unfolding of it all.
When we moved in last weekend, we didn’t need to rent a moving truck. Friends from church showed up with their cars and trucks, loaded our things, and drove to our new house and helped move us in. Already, we’ve walked to church, gone to a farmer’s market, and enjoyed free ice cream/Italian ice at a community night that we walked to with friends, sat up late in the ER with a neighbor, and had them babysit the kids last minute when another friend needed help. We’ve met half the neighbors on our block, most of whom are people who have been here for decades. And one family with kids my kids’ ages who homeschool.
If I had it my way (and what I believe to be God’s way), no one would be without the kind of community and connections that shows up to help, believes in them, carries burdens, roots down together with time.
We didn’t find a reprieve out on the edge of the city with wooded trails and lake. And it’s not a garden. We’ve moved further up and further into the city. A place to stay.
In the style of Paul Harvey, who ran a radio segment by the same name. I remember hearing him over the car radio on the way to and from school when my mom would drive us.
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Loved catching up on this and all the little details God did! And the peonies! 😭 So sweet on the timing of also getting to go to the Cultivate retreat too! Blessings in this new home!!
this was an encouraging read! i am so happy you have a place to build community and roots, and that it unfolded in such a beautiful whirlwind. but maybe, most of all, i am pleased you got your peonies. <3