FINDING HOME – CONTINUED

Picking up where we last left off, I need to finish sharing the story of our “finding home” adventure. After we returned to Colorado from our 11-day trip to the Midwest, we were flying pretty high. We had explored possible areas to move to and we were already under contract on our house! Incredibly thankful to God for bringing us just the right buyers on day one of the listing, we knew our dreams of debt-free living were getting closer to becoming reality. We were also relieved that we would not have to live in our home while it was continually being shown to prospective buyers.

Choices and Prayer

The trip was a complete success. We found a place in Southwest Missouri that felt like it could be home. Our heads were spinning with the possibility of moving from Colorado. We’ve loved our time in Colorado; it’s a beautiful state and will always be a part of our story. Our hearts were also breaking more and more with the thought of leaving our family. Thankfully we also had plenty of things to focus on with the move from our house and into an apartment. The distractions were quite welcome. And there would be plenty of time for us to pray and seek God’s guidance as well!

Moving to an apartment would give us all of the time we needed to find our next home. We continued to search for homes in Colorado but once we started crunching the numbers on housing prices and potential mortgages, we pretty much knew that Colorado would not be our home for much longer. The one Missouri house we still had on our list in Zillow was the one house in the one neighborhood and on the one lake we were most drawn to during our entire trip. And we could pay all cash for it.

Couldn’t Hurt To Ask…

After we had been home for about a week, I had an overwhelming feeling that I needed to find out more about that house. While we weren’t ready to pursue any possible purchases, I wanted to find out more. Hey, you never know what you may find out or what may end up happening.

Zillow connected me to an agent named Angie who turned out to be an absolute treasure. In talking with her, I shared our situation, told her we didn’t really love the house, but that we loved the neighborhood. We had a list of questions for her on the house that she agreed to track down answers for. But before she could follow-up on everything, the house went under contract. The house had been on the market for over a year. Just when we became interested in it, it was no longer available. We knew we had connected with a gem in Angie however; she made me laugh all the time. Her Midwest accent and sense of humor was always a delight.

Gone, But Was It Really?

That particular house was no longer available. We were disappointed and I don’t know why. We were not ready to actually buy a house yet. Our plans were to buy only after we closed on the sale of our house because we didn’t want to sweat through coordinating two sales. We knew if it was gone, it wasn’t meant to be! Interested in helping us start the search for a home regardless, Angie jumped right in to help. Again, you never know!

Angie offered to start showing us homes remotely via video. We began looking for places in the area and discovered a few of interest (not in “the” neighborhood however). A couple of weeks in, I was looking at listings again and there it was, the original house I called Angie about. Yep, it had fallen out of escrow and was back on the market!

God Makes A Way, Every Step Of The Way

Long story short, the buyers backed out (something about never having had a septic tank before and it freaked them out). We, being well versed in septic tanks (okay, yuck), were certainly not freaked out. And just like that, Angie was heading over to the house to “show” us around. We knew there were issues with the house just from the photos online and Angie’s tour confirmed those problems for us. The house had been flipped, but it was a cheap and shoddy attempt. The less than stellar renovation explained why the house had been on the market for so long. And we knew a little something about renovations and successfully selling a home. The issues did not outweigh our interest in the home however. Honestly, the price of the home and the neighborhood carried all of the weight! Buying this house would allow us to be 100% debt free and that was more than we could begin to fully comprehend at the time. It seemed so surreal.

We had just closed on our house in Colorado when all of this began to get serious. We knew that God had been in complete control of everything from the time we decided to sell our house in early 2020, through the entire renovation, and then the sale of the house just a few months later. He led us the entire way. Every step of the process fell into place so easily. Really, it was truly amazing!

We’ll Take It!

We chose to put an offer on the house sight unseen (well at least it was virtually seen). It was scary but we still had an out should anything come up with the house inspection. We knew we were ready to take the leap of faith and that this process would continue to be God led. On a Sunday morning in early October, we submitted an offer on the house. The offer was accepted that evening and four days later, we were back in Missouri for the inspection.

Everything worked out to our liking during the inspection process and so in just a little over a month from closing on our old house, we were closing on our new home. It was all meant to be without any doubt. God led us to this place we now call home.

The house is a lot smaller than our Young Victorian in Colorado so we had to purge a bunch of stuff during the move. That process was very cleansing though; a fresh start with only the necessities. Thankfully, the buyers of our old house wanted quite a bit of our furniture too. They bought so many pieces that we would never have had room for in our new home. We lightened our load for the move and had additional money in our pockets as well. When we walked out of the escrow closing debt-free, we had never known so much freedom. We were free from owning too much “stuff” and owing too much debt. It was a whole new world for us!

In Time

And while there were a lot of projects in our future to make this new house our home, it was livable just as it was. Our last house had to be completely renovated and we had to start immediately because it was, well, pretty gross. Our new little home on the lake in Missouri would get us by just fine until we were ready to start working on her, which we would do in just shy of one year. Taking our time moving from Colorado, lake time, having the grandkids for a two-week visit over the summer, and getting acquainted with our new State would be our new-found priorities.

So that’s the story of yet another big move, family and friends thinking “Here they go again!”, God’s amazing provisions, and the beginning of our debt-free life! Thanks for hanging with us on this journey!

Blessings Upon Blessings,

{Shelley}