Look for the good...in your home.

Tuesdays will now be known as “home day”.  We will be discussing what we love about our homes, what we want to change, how to make the best of the space we have, etc.  This first “home post” is my love story with my house.  Please excuse the sappiness, but I truly believe that my family was meant to live in this house…

…About 2 ½ years ago, my husband and I decided to move back to our hometown.  We began looking at houses, and put our own house on the market.  One day, I happened to find a picture online of a big old house in our town.  I had always wanted a big old house…but of course, they either cost too much money or they had too much work to be done.  However, this one had a really low price, so I told my husband we should go look at it.  And so we did.  It didn’t take long to see why the price was so low—it was a disaster! Water damage from the roof all the way down to the basement, the walls were stained with who-knows-what, the interior doors were all gone, the floors were ruined, and the driveway was caving in.  Not to mention the graffiti on the fireplace in the living room!

As we walked through the house with the realtor, my heart sank. I could see the original features of the house, and I could picture in my mind what it could be.  But we just didn’t have the money, or the time, to fix this house.  So, we walked away. About two months later, our house sold.  We still hadn’t found a house, so the three of us (our son was 1 at the time) moved in with my parents. I was pregnant with our second child, I was still dreaming of the big old house, and I wanted to live there so bad. I could just picture our family growing there, our children running down the stairs on Christmas morning, all of my books in the front office…

…and then, a miracle.  My best friend calls me and says “the big house is for sale again, I just saw the sign”.  Immediately, I get my husband in the car and drive over there.  We knew that someone had bought the house and begun to fix it up, because we had seen lots of work trucks there, and had watched them put on a new roof.  But that wasn’t all that was new!  As we pulled around to the back of the house, I couldn’t believe it.  The driveway had been completely torn out and a new one poured, and when we peeked in the back window, we could see that they had re-done everything.  I grabbed my cell phone and began to call the number on the sign, and we waited to hear the new price.

Long story short, as you can guess, we got my dream house in the end.  It now has new floors, new roof, new cabinets, new appliances, new everything.  But yet, it’s still the same old house. It still has the staircase, which my children ran (crawled) down last winter to see what Santa had brought them, and it still has the memories of the house it once was. Since moving in, we have gotten to know some of the family members who lived here, and I love hearing the stories.  Their dad was a lawyer, and when I sit in my office at my desk, sometimes I can picture him there in the 1950s working on his trials.  When they moved in, they had 5 children.  After moving in, they had 5 more. Yes, TEN children grew up in this house!

I can assure you that ten children will not be growing up in this house again, but as I write this post, I am currently pregnant with our third child in four years, so we are well on our way!  The rooms are filling up with cribs, toddler beds, and toys, and we could not be happier.  I pray that I never take for granted the miracle of getting this house. God truly does work in mysterious ways…the fact that our old house sold, and that we lived with my parents for the next 7 months, allowed us to save enough money to afford the house the second time around…and we didn’t have to do any of the work in restoring the house!  I can honestly say that I tell my husband weekly, if not more, how much I love our house and how grateful I am for everything that we have, for the family that we have started, and for the future that we will have in this house.

So, perhaps you don’t live in your dream house. Yet.  But today, as you look around your own home (whether it be a house, a trailer, an apartment, or someone’s basement), try to be thankful for what you have.  I’m guessing you have a lot more than some people will ever have in their lives, and this is what we should remember.  Look for the good in your home.  What makes you happy there? And if you aren’t happy, what are some steps you could take to change that?  And if you do already live in your dream home, please don’t ever take it for granted. I know I won’t.