At the beginning of August when there was no hope of Christopher coming home before school started on August 22nd, Tracy and I decided to take the girls on a "surprise" trip to finish our summer on a fun note. They knew we were driving and they should pack a swimsuit but until the morning we left they had no clue where we were going. So not like us and I was excited! Our short trip WAS fun but it wasn't turning out like we had hoped. I was hoping for a little more free time to read and the girls were hoping for a little more Disneyland excitement than the hotel & water park was providing. Needless to say, there was some grumbling from all sides. We decided to hit an American Girl Store to cheer the clan (more grumbling from dad). On the way there, I mindlessly clicked my phone screen on and there it was - an email from CCAI. August 7 - we have received Christopher's passport and your paperwork is heading over to the Embassy today!!!!! I screamed and read it out loud and we had the BEST DAY EVER dance right there in the mall parking lot. Some grandma offered her granddaughter to take our family's picture. It's amazing how contagious joy is among strangers. It was fun to share our smiles and cheers that day.
That night as we were packing to go home, I uttered the words that started our crazy next 2 months - "What do you think about moving?"
Many times, we had talked about wanting a home that not only fit our family but also would be a place of ministry whether that was to host families or having a room big enough for a youth ministry...There were certain limitations on our current home that didn't allow for that kind of growth. We both talked about how crazy it would be. We both silently prayed as we fell asleep and the dreams of expanding grew over night. On our drive home we talked to a great friend and asked him to list our home and help us find another one (he thought we were crazy). We talked to a dear friend about helping us with our financing (she didn't know us well enough to tell us we were crazy). We didn't want to hear from anyone else how crazy we were so we silently went home to de-clutter our house in order to put it on the market. That was Thursday while we were on the road driving home...
In one week's time, we had begun packing, paired down, listed our house, had about 5 showings and had our house under contract for more than asking. Talk about miraculous. Can you count them? Still knowing we were crazy, we refused to tell too many people. We were now a little on the nervous side, knowing that in 4 weeks time, we could potentially be homeless without a plan. So we prayed knowing that God didn't lead us this far to leave us. We had looked at 4 potential houses and none of them were the right fit for our future. There were no other options for us to buy... We were staying in our current neighborhood, that was a non-negotiable. So we continued to pray.
We decided to rent until God brought us clarity on the right house to buy. We went to look at a rental that was available as soon as we needed it. I loved the floor plan. Not even knowing that model of home was in our neighborhood, I was encouraged that there were more homes we could look at buying. This model of house was for sale right around the corner - way out of our price range. The day before we were to sign the rental agreement my parents came over. I went on-line to show them the beautiful, updated house for sale as an example of what the rental space would be. The owners had dropped the price the night before, BY A LOT!!! We went and looked at it the next day and I knew. God had picked this house for us. He had it safely out of our price range until we had our old house under contract so that we could make an offer. He showed us the rental so that my mind would be open to the floor plan. We made an offer and 2 weeks after we started on this crazy road, we had 2 houses under contract.
Here's the part of the story where I have to believe that our God lives outside time and knows perfection of sequence that is unknown to us. It was August 23rd. Due to the our buyer being superstitious, we moved the closing on our old house from September 13th to September 19th. Our new home sellers' travel schedule needed them to push that closing to October 11th. A 3 week gap is no biggie to a stable family of 5. We could be homeless for a little bit...
Ready for this? After the weekend, on August 26th we received the email that we had visa approval and one day later we found out that our little man would be ready to come home September 10th! Talk about news that brings you to your knees in prayer. This was too fast! We weren't ready. We would be living at some level chaos for the next 6 weeks. Again, we were reassured that God would not have brought us this far to leave us without a way. I made plane reservations, put our home in as much order as I could and left to get Christopher on September 6th. Tracy stayed home for the girls' sake and life ceased to be what we had known for the past 7 years as a family of 5...
