A Breath of Fresh Air

I just walked outside for the first time this morning...okay it's 11:00, that's basically early afternoon-but I only have like another week off, I'm allowed a bit of relaxing/lazing around. But what I did notice was, WOW, I could breathe again! The humidity that has really been bothering my asthma the past few days has let up and I could finally take a deep breath...now that's nice.
Today is a day of running lots of errands, getting paperwork for teaching done, etc. It's really been a long/frustrating process and I'm just SO ready to get my own classroom. All of my friends are at a place where I want to be, but I know there's a reason for why things work out the way they do.

We are currently living in Carmel and there are 11 elementary schools here, blessing! However, when looking over the housing market here, we aren't exactly sure that what we want we will be able to afford. We are kind of picky in what we want...as we should be, housing is a HUGE investment. In Carmel, there aren't a lot of homes with big yards, lots of trees, lots of character...unless you want to shell out $500,000. If we really wanted to stay here we could, there are houses that are affordable...but we don't want to live in a cookie cutter subdivision with trees that resemble large weeds.
Also, we are kind of up here in the middle of nowhere family wise-my family is 2.5 hours away, not so bad compared to what it could be...but Howard's side of the family is even an hour away. We are looking in a few areas on other sides of the city that would be closer to them as well. Don't get me wrong, we feel so blessed to be in such a great area, in a beautiful apartment...I think we have just come to a realization (unless things change) that we are going to be looking in other areas.

So, that brings me to what we're doing tonight...we are going to look at a house in Greenfield. It's a smaller town, but the house we like is only 6 miles from Howard's work...moments from the city, which I like. We came across this house kind of by chance when we weren't seriously looking. I have been pretty set on staying in Carmel because lets be honest, it's lovely, but when I saw this house-I saw family. It's big enough to stay for a long time, I could finally bring in my dining room table to cook our friends & family dinner, we could have many cookouts by the POOL, and when I watched the images fly by online I just could picture all of the good times that would be had. It's our dream house.

Now, it may be a bit out of our price range, but that brings me to another point. We didn't go to church the Sunday we first got our puppy so we watched Joel Osteen on TV instead. I love Joel, his words always touch me and they especially did on this day. The subject of his sermon was how God has "favor" on those who follow Him. He then told a story about him and his wife purchasing their first home. He said that they had found a townhome that was way more than they could afford, but that Joel felt a strong urge to offer half of the asking price. His wife was upset about this, embarrassed that he wanted to do it-but in the end she agreed after he persisted. Joel asked the realtor to tell the seller that they were a newlymarried couple looking for their first home and that they weren't trying to be insulting, but that they were just asking for a chance, for an opportunity to be in such a beautiful home...saying they had so many plans to keep it nice, grow a family there, etc. The offer was immediately refused by the seller, he said he just wasn't able to do something like that. The Osteens accepted what was said, but continued to pray about it. A few months later, a suprised realtor called them back and said that the townhome still wasn't selling and that the seller decided he wanted to accept their offer and give them a chance at their first home. Joel said that he credited this all to the fact that God has favor on those who follow and believe in Him. His words really gave Howard and I hope, and really rang true-why should we not think in such a way that we are already SO lucky to have God as our Father? Why wouldn't something great like this happen to us? It's really crazy how just this short bit of a sermon we caught on TV one Sunday when we couldn't even make it to church because of a sleepless night due to a new puppy, touched my life so much. When you're listening, God will speak.

So the point of this novel is that, Howard and I are at a place in our lives when we are really longing for a home. Whether it be in a few months or longer, we will wait-because we know we are in God's favor and that he will bless His children.

(By the way, we wouldn't be offering half of the asking price...thankfully we can afford more than that, haha! I'll keep you posted as we are going to look at other homes in Franklin on Saturday.)