Today, I had a very dear friend remind me to take the time to make note of everything going on in life.
This past few weeks have been a whirlwind. My husband has taken back to back trips, leaving me to deal with all this house stuff alone. I don't fault him, it's the job. Hence why we are moving to Ohio...less travel.
It's been hard physically. Going from morning to night non-stop on this project or that is no fun. We had lots of help. There were only a few days of about 14 that we didn't have someone here to help us. My husband's brothers and dad came this past weekend to help us push through the last. Several years of DIY home projects wrapped up in 2 weeks. Whew!!!!
We settled on a real estate agent. We got this incredibly helpful duo. No kidding. They put the for sale sign in the front yard and then spent the next hour talking through everything thing with us.
I'd like to pause from the factual part of this for a second. Not at any time during this process have I been quite as emotional as when they pushed that sign into my front lawn. That was the moment for me. The moment when the emotional part of this got real. It was the beginning of the end. We both stood in the kitchen, watching, silent. There wasn't a dry eye amongst us. A bittersweet moment that I am glad I got to share with my husband.
We did get my husband's company's official relocation package with two options for us. We did counter their offer and haven't heard back. We still know we are going, but are waiting to see if they will make any further concessions for us uprooting our lives. Still a wee bit stressful for us.
So, let me just touch on that a little bit. The offer didn't include a lot of what they promised. We were put in a position to choose the option where we were responsible for moving ourselves. My husband was absolutely not looking forward to renting a Uhaul and driving over 600 miles, only to have to do it again with the cars.
The company is allowing us a tiny bit of closing cost money. Speaking of money, yuck! That probably deserves a post of it's own someday, but buying another house was stressing us major. Neither of us had really financed anything since our deep debt debacle of 2007. We were both waking up at 3 and 4 am in cold sweats worried that we were going to have to rent because of bad credit. I was seriously having flashbacks from living in trailer houses with rats as big as dogs.
We have been worried that my husband would have to eat up his entire vacation to do stuff to the house and move us.
My husband walked around for two solid weeks reminding me that this move was going to put us in financial ruin.
Monday night, heart on my sleeve, I headed to bible study. In reality, life is getting so busy that it was probably the last or close to last night I could be with the ladies. I couldn't enjoy it. The stress weighed me down and kept me from soaking it in. They prayed for me, my husband and the house to sell. I left still feeling so defeated and depleted.
His mercies are new every morning. That's my new mantra.
Ok, so maybe not morning, but afternoon.
Tuesday, I tore down my garden because it just wasn't super appealing with the winter brown and dried weeds. I burned a vinyl glove into my right hand. I was having another bad day!
Then it all turned around. So fast, I couldn't hardly believe it. My head is still spinning. (Really, this fluctuation in weather is giving me vertigo.)
My agents have done an excellent job communicating and setting my expectations and educating me. They got the house listed on Tuesday and by Tuesday evening, we had our first appointment set for today. We ended up with four total showings for today. Once cancelled because they overlapped and one may not have shown up. We got great feedback from one and the other is interested. What that means, I don't really know yet. However, it makes my weary mind a little happier.
I've had multiple moving companies walk through and each one seemed to come in higher than the last. I've run the numbers and it just wasn't feasible for us to move ourselves with a Uhaul and then come all the way back for cars. Not to mention, I am not a good long distance driver when I am completely alone in the car. Late Tuesday afternoon, I had a quote come back from a friend of a friend who owns a moving company. With transporting one vehicle, packing, loading and unloading, he came in just $500 over our allowance for moving. We were both elated. We don't know where we are going to get the extra $500, but at least it's not double our allowance.
Another thing I could cover in an entire post by itself is a dear friend of ours. She's become like a little sister to us both. Our day to day life is going to be incredibly different being so far away from her. She has insisted from the beginning that she be a part of the moving process. She's been here through everything up to this point, we were both excited at her desire to make the long trip with us and unpack. We are beyond tapped out and we were planning to tell her this week that we just couldn't afford to fly her home. On Tuesday, we had some mutual friends offer to pay her plan ticket home. How incredibly thankful we are for that.
My agents got me hooked up with a mortgage specialist. They purposely sent us to someone who specializes in getting home loans for people with serious financial issues. Of course they did, cause we talk about our credit like we are the worst of the worst. Well much to our surprise, we have excellent credit. AND...we already got pre approval for a home loan. AND...we got approved for a lower interest rate, higher amount and lower house payment than we thought possible. No more cold sweats for us! That just made the idea of house hunting look a ton more fun too.
We can't get too excited yet. To get into a house, we may very well use every bit of savings we have. In fact, it's going to make it tight for us. With all the closing costs, down payment, excess of expenses like moving...we are so totally going to be broke for our first few months in Ohio. I don't even know how I will fill my fridge with groceries, but trust in God to provide those little things that seem so big to me.
Really, isn't that the crux of all of this? Trusting in God. Each step along the way, my doubt has morphed into trusting God's timing and plan over my own, obedience and then watching Him work.
As you can see, my days are filled with highs and lows. I've started the difficult/necessary times of going to coffee or lunch with friends for the last time (at least last time for a long while). I'm sad a lot. Then I get excited. Crap, I feel like the Missouri bipolar weather girl.
Things are so uncertain. I'm still scared. We both are. We aren't sure how all these numbers are going to work and how we will make it through. It's all big stuff for me, little stuff for God. He's already got this figured out.
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