Another House Story

On January 1st, my husband and I put an offer in on a house.

We weren’t looking for a new house, we haven’t been planning on moving, and then suddenly everything changed.

For the last couple months of 2017, both Matt and I had started to feel restless. We weren’t sure what it meant, or what would be on the horizon but we both felt God was about to do something.

In January of 2017, I “retired” from my Ask Anna blog and felt the Lord calling me back to what is really important – family, friends, one-on-one time with my daughter, etc. Throughout the year I’ve had thoughts about purging so much of our stuff and downsizing to a home that’s more simple and less space to take care of so we’d have time to focus on the things that are really important to us. I never verbalized these thoughts, because I LOVE our house, but still they fluttered around in the back of my mind and I thought, “some day it will be nice…”.

And then Matt took the week of Christmas off and we had lots of conversations in the evenings about what it would look like for us to do something different. What was God doing? We both felt we were on the brink of something but had no idea what it was. Change was coming but what did that change look like?

As the New Year approached I started asking God to show us what He was up to, and to do it before the New Year arrived. The last week of 2017 I reminded the Lord, every day, the promise He’d given us at the beginning of the year, and I asked Him to move quickly and do it in 2017. I wasn’t asking Him for a house but that’s how He answered me.

December 30th I made a joke to Matt to find me a house in the neighborhood right next to ours, which is a cute old neighborhood we’ve always loved. We’ve looked at houses over there in the past but they have always needed a lot of work and I am not signing up for anymore house makeovers ever again (unless the Lord calls me to it). The difference is that when Matt looked that morning there was a house – a cute 1950’s ranch style house, completely updated.

That afternoon we met our friend, and real estate agent, over there to look at the house. The next day we looked at it again, with friends, and on the 1st we put in an offer.

There’s just something about this house, it’s smaller, it’s older, it doesn’t have the incredible views we have, but it feels comfortable, peaceful, and in some strange way it feels like it’s promising me freedom and simplicity. It’s almost like it’s calling me back to the 50’s when things were more simple and people spent more time with their families.

Our current house has taken us on such an incredible journey, we completely remodeled it from top to bottom and in so many ways Matt and I have also undergone some renovations while we’ve been here. I love love love this house and I will forever be so thankful for our time here, the home where Gabriella became part of our family.

However when we bought this house we knew it was going to be a project house, and it definitely has been, but even now that it’s almost perfect, I still look around and see projects that I feel like need to be done. It’s hard to put into words what I feel in my spirit but this home, that has been such an incredible blessing, has almost become a burden. A burden of a list of projects that still need to be done because the vision in my head hasn’t been completed.

So there’s an ongoing list of things to get done on my “project house” but I feel being pulled in the other direction, no more projects, no more weekends trying to get someone to watch Malea so she can still have a fun weekend even though we’re doing a project all weekend, I want to be with Malea. I want to spend time with my family and have the freedom to do so without feeling like there’s a project list sitting on my shoulder waiting for some attention.

I don’t by any means want to seem ungrateful for the blessing this house has been, or the incredible season the Lord has brought us through while living here, but Matt and I both feel the Lord moving us in a different direction. We both actually feel like this new house is just the beginning of something greater the Lord is doing.

We feel like this is a starting point, to what, we don’t know but we are excited to see.

All we can do now is trust the Lord that this new house, this new season, is exactly where He wants us to be for now, and prayerfully anticipate everything else that will follow. There will be days we will look back and miss our home but I know there will be even more days ahead where we see the blessings of the Lord for being obedient to leave it behind and move in the direction He’s leading us.

2018 you have been exciting and unexpected already, I can’t wait to see what else will come!