Monday, October 10, 2011

My Two Houses

I took a bath tonight.  I haven't had a bath in I don't know how long, but it was one of those days.  I needed some time to be alone with my thoughts and just relax.  Now granted it only lasted about 7 minutes, because I could hear Kiki getting pretty angry and knew she was probably still hungry, but it was wonderful no matter how short.

While I was relaxing I noticed the water wasn't warm enough for my liking.  If you know me, you know that I always come out of a shower with red marks from the heat.  I love me some hot water!  So anyway, I turned up the heat.  I didn't really notice it heating up at all.  Then I slowly started feeling the hot and warm water mixing.  I could almost see it happening.  For some reason, this made me think of the object lesson of the frog in water.  If you put it in a pot of cool water and slowly warm it up to boiling, it will have grown so content that it will never notice and will end up being boiled to death, never even realizing it could have jumped out to safety.  I think it was a frog...I could be getting confused with the frog churning milk into butter.   No matter, which animal got boiled to death isn't really the point. This story made me think.  It's easy to get so content in life.  So content with everything that you don't even realize that you aren't depending 100% on God.  You don't even feel Satan creeping in.

Today was kind of a stressful day.  A day where I said to myself, "I really need you right now, God."  After I said it, I got really ashamed, because, I really need him every day, all of the time.  Not just when things get tough or hard to figure out.  I really am striving to make Him my everyday priority.  To put Him first and not wait until things get tense and I don't know what else to do.  Now when I read back over this, I don't really know how the frog story really goes with this, but somehow in my head it did.

So, you may be wondering, "What's been so stressful today, Stephanie?"  Well, I hate to admit this, but we found a different house we really like.  I know, why were we even looking?  I don't know!!!  But we found it and we couldn't get it out of our heads.  It has 1.44 acres and has the most amazing play area in the backyard for kids.  We ended up telling our realtor about it and she took us this afternoon to look at it.  Well, we really loved it inside, as well.  It needs a little updating here and there, but all in all it's pretty perfect.  You may remember that we are supposed to close on our other house next week!  I love the other house.  There is nothing that needs to be done with it, but I hate the fact that we are so close to our neighbors.  Will I be happy in that house?  Of course, but we had to see about this other house.

It is a short sale and has been on the market for quite awhile, so the sellers are very motivated.  That does mean that the bank has to give it's approval on any offer.  At this point, the asking price is way above our price range, but since they are so motivated our realtor thought there is a chance they might accept a low ball offer.  We decided to continue on with our current contract (because we still love the first house), but put a majorly low offer on the other house.  If, for some reason, the owners and the bank accept the offer, we know it was supposed to happen.  If not, we tried.  There are some other things that will need to come together, as well, but they are all technical and I don't feeling like typing that much tonight.  So anyway, we put it all in God's hands and we will see what's going to happen in the next few days.

We will probably end up losing a few thousand dollars in the process if we break the other contract, so that will be a big bummer.  Nobody loves losing money, especially if it's in the thousands.  So anyway, there's a lot to consider and I'm just plain stressed about it.  Also, my two wailing little girls who have had about enough of living in one room didn't help either.

Here are a few pics of the house. They aren't great.




So back to my epiphany in the bath.  I hate that days like this are the days that I realize how much I need God.  I read a quote by Max Lucado that really hit me today, "A woman's heart should be so hidden in God's that a man should have to seek Him, just to find her."  I want that for my life and for my relationship with God.  I don't want to be a fair weather friend, but have a relationship so close that it's hard to tell us apart:).

Please keep this situation in your prayers.  The good thing is that we will definitely be happy no matter where we are as long as we've got our little family.  We are so blessed and if finding the right house is the biggest problem we have, we are doing okay:)

Love you all!

1 comment:

nicole said...

Hi fellow hot-water friend:) I'm thinking of you so much and will continue to do so over the next few days as you try to leave this huge decision in God's hands. Love you.