May 31, 2017

Ahhhh..... we're finally on the other end. We're moved out, have found a house in Missouri, said our good-byes to the E. Washington contingent of friends and family, and are now spending three days simply recovering at beautiful Steamboat Rock State Park.

I DID start to cry yesterday as I said my silent good-byes to everything and everyone familiar on my way out. "Goodbye" to 'our mountain' (as Gunnar called it) with the green roof of our former home visible only to those with an eye to see it from the highway. But crowding out the sadness was a recollection of the journey and how God's hand has been leading us out for some time. Let me take you back to September, 2016...

We received a full-price, cash offer with a close in two weeks!!! Yikes! All stops were pulled as we got the word out and people came in droves to 'shop' at our home! Our intention was to save only our antique furniture and sell the rest, along with all the equipment. Labor Day saw us rescued by grandson Alex, wife Rachel and their three children. What dynamoes!! They packed and hauled and consolidated and hussled to our complete exhaustion and relief! Home inspection, well draw-down and radon testing were all completed the same weekend. Alex and company left Monday and the house was in a shambles reflecting the half-move we had all accomplished. Carol and Skip came to pick up mom's old sewing machine, and a buyer handed Fritz cash to purchase the bulldozer. I was typing up a Bill of Sale when the realtor called. The buyer had decided to cancel. We reeled from shock! He gave no real reason, but cited the home inspection (which our realtor had called the day before to say there was nothing major in the inspection, just a lot of little things having to do with unfinished projects). I walked the dozer-buyer's money back out to him, tearfully explaining the situation.  Then I broke down in my sister's arms while Fritz was talking with the prospective buyer, trying to understand his change of heart (to no avail).

It was only our trust in God and HIS plans for us that gave us the strength to put the pieces back together again. Thankfully, while we had sold a lot of 'stuff', we had parted with nothing necessary, and some of the things we would like to have kept, kind buyers offered to leave them and get their cash back. We were exhausted, emotionally and physically, but continued to reassemble our fractured lives. It would be months before God graciously revealed to us HIS reason for not allowing that sale to go through. From a human perspective, we found out the buyer was a widowed 70-year-old who absolutely loved the house. But Labor Day weekend, we left so the realtor could show him the boundaries, and he brought his 75-year-old sister, his daughter and granddaughter to show them the place. Our realtor said the sister was negative, the daughter concerned about the size of the house. We concluded he may have been a recent widow who made an emotional decision which his older sister eventually talked him out of. But none of that matters because God had a job for us to do that we had no clue about at the time.

Since this is going to be a chronological detailing of the unfolding past nine months, you'll have to wait to find out too! 😁