2 years...

I married my best friend 2 years ago today. In some ways it doesn't seem like it could be that long and in other ways I can't remember my life without Paul. I am so proud of the man of God and husband that he is to me.

God didn't create marriage to make us happy; rather He created it to make us holy. But there are also many, many blessings that can come from a marriage done God's way and I am so truly thankful for those blessings. We have been through some tough things, especially with the house, but God has used those things to make us closer to Him and to each other.





I look forward to what God has planned for us in this next year of marriage.

On the up and up

Yesterday was a week since we found out the bad news about the house. My spirit has been down and I've been in a so-not-like-me funk ever since. I have had a bad attitude and bottom line-was not at all deserving (not that we ever deserve anything from God, but you know what I mean) of any encouragement to come my way.

Wednesday night God brought encouragement to our front door. A man rang our doorbell and told Paul he wanted to buy our house. I know, it's a little weird but nonetheless it was a real person, at our door, wanting to buy our house! He had been looking at it on Listingbook and decided to drive by the neighborhood. He saw our neighbor outside and asked her if anyone lived in our house. She told him we did and that Paul had just gotten home (I was at Bible study). Paul ended up having a 30 minute conversation with this guy and he seemed truly serious about our house. Who knows if anything further will come from it. What I do know, is that God literally sent someone to our door to lift our spirits and bring encouragement right when we needed it the most.

His grace and mercy continue to amaze me!

Weekend in Wilmington

We had a lovely weekend in Wilmington spending time with family. My cousin Ashley and her husband Craig have been living about 8 hours away where Craig was based in the Navy. He recently finished his service and Wilmington was first on their list of places to live. Thankfully he got a great job working for GE.

We stayed with Paul's parents since they only live about 45 minutes from Wilmington. Friday night we all met up for dinner at Bluewater Grill. It had a beautiful water front view and the seafood was delicious. We hadn't seen Cole since October so I couldn't wait to get my hands on him.





My cousin and our sweet Granddaddy :)


Saturday was Cole's first birthday party.





He liked his Bible from his godparents :)



I figured Cole wouldn't warm up to me very much since he's only seen me twice in his life. But he was the sweetest little thing and just loved and loved on everybody. I could have let him squeeze me forever!



Sweet boy was such a trooper. He partied all day and still had smiles and energy left to hit the pool for a while.



The Bardsleys new home.


Pretty pond in their neighborhood.


It was a great weekend and I am so glad that Ashley, Craig and Cole are closer and we will get to see them much more. We didn't get to see Mom and Dad Hicks much but thankfully we will see them next week on vacation.

Stuff

We had a wonderful weekend in Wilmington visiting family. Our sweet godson Cole was the perfect distraction to the huge letdown about the house. Unfortunately I couldn't bring my distraction home with us.

It wasn't the most fun coming in last night to boxes everywhere...most of which we will have to unpack now that we aren't moving. I am feeling better than I was on Thursday, but I wouldn't say I am over it, or really even close to over it. I cannot recall ever being this angry with someone I don't even know. I am furious with this woman who was going to buy our house. I should have known she wasn't a good person from the night she stayed over an hour past her scheduled time until 9:00 on a Sunday night. Our realtor was very open with her realtor about where we were financially and what it meant for us after accepting her offer. She lied and said she was at her limit with what she could borrow for the house and that she didn't have ANY money for closing. So she knew exactly where it was putting us financially. Now she is paying $10-$15,000 more for a house and she apparently has enough money not to care that she had already paid to get our house inspected and appraised. She also gave us a joke of earnest money since she "didn't have any more money up front". So of course that wasn't an incentive for her to stick around when something better came along. There were several other stressors that she put us through in the couple of weeks we were under contract-one being that we almost had to fork over another $1,000 to add something to the house. Thank God we didn't go there. I know it's part of the real estate game and I shouldn't take it so personal, but I do. I can't imagine ever doing this to someone. The only reason Paul and I weren't already under contract with a house ourselves is because we were going to have to live with my mom for a while to recover from where this was leaving us financially. Thank God we didn't have to back out on someone like she backed out on us.

I'd like to think that by the time she moves in I will have forgiven her in my heart and will bake her brownies and welcome her to the neighborhood. But right now in my flesh I am not at that place. I am struggling with a lot of "whys?". I don't know what the purpose of this is and we may not ever know. It's hard to want to persevere. It's not easy to praise God in the storm. But I want to and am going to try really hard.

Blog post of our weekend and sweet Cole coming soon...

There isn't a good title for this one

I hate to be a Debbie Downer on this beautiful Thursday, but this is not going to be a happy post.

A foreclosure went on the market a few days ago and we'd seen it on Listingbook and loved it. Our realtor sent us a link to a house she thought would be perfect for us and what do you know-it was the same house. She said we might could get them to accept an offer even knowing we couldn't close for a few months and we really needed to go look at it. So we decided to go see it this afternoon. After all, it sounded like way more fun than packing boxes. I got to Paul's school to pick him up to go look at the house and instead this is the news I got...

The lady who was buying our house backed out. For something better. In our neighborhood. And with the real estate laws now, that is all she had to say. I wish I could say I was kidding. We got this news just a short time ago so I am writing with very fresh emotions.

Upset would be such an understatement. We have been through any and everything stressful you can imagine with this deal since the second the first offer went through. She was taking us for everything we had and then some. We weren't thrilled about it, I haven't had the best attitude about it, but nonetheless it was what it was and we were prepared to go there. We were accepting where it was going to put us financially and were finally almost as prepared as you can get to lose a crap load of money and move in with your mom for 4 months. At least after waiting for almost two and a half years for the house to sell, we were finally going to be moving on.

Now we are back to square one, with a lot more emotion behind it than we've already had the past 2 plus years. The stress of packing our house up in a week is gone. With that time now we get to call and cancel the POD and call to say never mind to the gas, the cable, the water, the energy and everyone who had planned to help us pack and or move. Oh, but at least the lady bothered to let us know this before we moved out in a week. What a sweetheart.

I don't want to hear "it just wasn't meant to be" or "it will all work out" or "it could be worse." So instead of trying to think of what you could say-please, please, please just pray for us. I am not trying to be rude, just real. I know those things to be true and I will NOT change my mind about knowing that God knows what He's doing. But I am not going to lie and say that is making it all better either. Because this stinks. Bad. We are leaving in a few hours to go out of town and be with family-all of which "can't wait to hear about the good house news". Instead we'll be trying our best to pretend everything is hunky dory. But it isn't and it's not gonna be anytime real soon.

You can bet I'll be the first one to introduce myself to our soon-to-be new neighbor.

Amazed!

We had our Kenya yard sale fundraiser this weekend and it was a HUGE success! After working all night Thursday and Friday setting up and getting up at 5:00 a.m. on Saturday, I was beginning to wonder if it would all be worth it. A few people had told us not to expect to raise more than a couple hundred dollars. It ended up being a lot more work than we all anticipated and honestly, I think we would have cried at a couple hundred dollars. But God multiplied that a few times and we ended up raising a little over $2,000!!!!

We had some awesome help from friends and family and could not have pulled it off without them. I am so humbled by all of the items people so graciously donated for us to sell and am even more humbled and amazed at the time some people spent helping us. Our friends Abbie and Chris put in a grand total of 15 hours between Friday and Saturday helping us. I know very few people who are as generous with their time as they have been to us. Abbie also made three dozen cupcakes and a bunch of cookies for us to sell and it really helped to add to the total amount raised. Our friend Daphne who is also part of our Kenya team, teaches high school and had to read names at graduation on Saturday. We knew this when we planned the yard sale but it was the only date we could do it and hoped we'd have enough help without her. Her sweet parents stood in her place and worked their butts off.

Our plan with the money raised is to deposit it into a separate account and if any of the three of us (me, my mom and Daph) do not raise all that we need in order to go, we'll split it accordingly. If we all raise our support, we plan to use a small amount of the money on buying supplies needed for our trip prior to leaving and spend the rest on buying Bibles for as many people as possible once we get to Kenya.

I can't thank everyone enough for their donations, prayer, help and support. I am truly in awe of what God did through the yard sale.

Update

For those of you that don't already know about what's going on, sorry to leave you hanging since the last post about the house. Life has been a tad bit busy. Here's an update in a nutshell:

We are officially under contract! We went back and forth with several counter offers, all taking place during our trip to Chicago (one even being on the airplane). We have a huge mix of emotions but most of all we are thankful. It's been over two years since we put Paul's townhouse on the market and just six months ago we were still making two mortgage payments before mine sold. So we are praising God for His faithfulness and answered prayers! Although we are thankful, I'm not going to pretend it's all just peachy either. We aren't really selling our house...it's more like we are paying someone to buy it. The amount of money we will have lost to sell both of our houses literally makes me sick to my stomach. Our realtor thinks if we ever want out of the townhouse, we have got to take this loss and get out now or it could be much worse down the road. The value of the homes in our neighborhood continue to depreciate and if we're going to have to lose money on it, it's best we do it now while we can recover. So we'll be moving in with family for several months to pay back what we're losing and save up for a house. We are very thankful for the timing of this though. I can't imagine going through this with kids and our summer is so busy anyway, that the first couple of months will fly by.

To say we are overwhelmed would be an understatement. The lady buying our house is closing in 3 weeks. Our Kenya yard sale fundraiser is this weekend so we won't even have time to think about packing a box until that's over. Next weekend we'll be out of town and we'll have to be moved out by the next weekend. Thankfully we have the best family and friends anyone could ask for and I know we'll have a lot of help and support over the next few weeks. The Lord has picked a wonderful opportunity for refining me and honestly, I am grateful for that.

As I've said before, my God knows what He's doing and this doesn't make me doubt that for a second! In the words of my dear friend Alexandra, "YA BETTA SAY IT!"