Our First Home

So we bought a house… and then we sold a house.  This would only be a typical big deal in most circumstances, but somehow, our circumstances don’t seem typical.

 

 In November of 2019 I was hit hard with depression.  I lost track of myself and nothing felt okay.  This was not a run of the mill “feeling down.”  I hadn’t felt this way since postpartum depression descended upon me in 2005.  At least then I had a beautiful baby girl to smile at me and pull me through my days.  Sure, my family was with me in 2019, but it wasn’t the same.  There was no joy, and it lasted….  Month after month of sorrow and despondence.  I worked so hard to put on a good face and trudge forward, but I could not move past the stranglehold this depression had on me.  My family did everything they could to help and I saw how much this was hurting them.  Still, I was stuck.  

Then Covid hit and lockdowns started and all the bitterness and virtue signaling and hate and ugliness unleashed itself on our nation and the world.  Everyone knew better than their neighbor; no one knew anything.  Around this same time our orders to Germany were negated because someone at Fort Huachuca wanted my husband to stay for another assignment.  I was bitter and I’m still working on forgiving the orchestration of that cancellation.  I was emotionally unreachable and struggling to find a life raft.  

A headline popped up on my screen one afternoon about crazy low interest rates.  I thought about it.  I looked at my whole life of being in debt and I looked at my own financial projections.  I saw a little potential to be in a better place if we stopped throwing money away on rent and put a bee in my husband’s bonnet (pile cap?) about maybe finding a fixer-upper to “give me something to do” and to help us accelerate our limping path out of debt.  He took a risk on my whim and we started looking. 

There was a doosey of a house that we thought might fit and I called for a showing.  I don’t know how the calm, dignified Leah Reeder of R A Home Team got my call, but she showed up and changed my life.  We poked around the house and I explained my general plan and she listened.  Once we had finished looking she shared with me that she had another house in mind that might suit us better with fewer actual problems and more cosmetic issues.  I took the bait and scheduled a showing.
   

Soon, Leah met us at the Brae Burn Street house.  I walked in and it smelled like my grandparents’ house.  That may not sound like a good thing, but the flood of emotional memories that hit me as I stepped through the door was almost unbearable.  I remembered my birthdays with my Grandpa Ralph, a lifetime of holidays, naps by the fireplace, sweet Grandma Ruth’s laugh.  I had no business falling in love with a house over a smell, but I couldn’t shake it.  Popcorn ceilings, cracks, old everything, mismatched fixtures, cramped bathrooms, a tiny kitchen, and a myriad of other issues didn’t seem daunting in the least.  I felt years of love with that scent and after months of deep depression, I just wanted to sit there and breathe it in.  

We bought the house at less than it was listed for with a rock bottom interest rate.  They took away the staging furniture and the smell disappeared.  But it was okay.  I certainly had something to do at this point.  I dove in.  My depression lifted.  I didn’t find myself though.  I still felt lost, but I felt the ground under my feet and I could serve my family’s needs again.  It was enough for now.  

I won’t list all of what we did to the home, but I will say, it was a lot.  I ruined my shoulders on the ceilings and every room in that house was altered.  I learned so many new skills and learned that sometimes, it’s okay to get help from professionals.  The house was transformed from a dated rental to a mostly updated home (those bathrooms definitely still need some love).  It was my labor.  My family was there, but it was my whim so it was my work.  I can count on my fingers and toes the days that I didn’t work in the two years we lived in that house.  By the end, I was completely exhausted.  No longer depressed, but anxious, tired, and frantic.  I had thought we’d be in the home longer and there was more to be done.  How could it sell without those 1978 bathrooms tended to?  What about the patio that needed serious beautification?  What about those carpets?  We had spent all our money.  No loans, but still, all our money.   What if no one liked my alterations?  What if it didn’t sell?

I’d kept in contact with Leah throughout our time in the home and I relied on her wisdom to put our home on the market.  Even in the seller’s market of May 2022, I was afraid.  I prayed and prayed and prayed.  And I must add that praying on financial matters is not common for me.  Prosperity Gospel and such rub me the wrong way and I feel pretty wrong bringing money matters to the Lord.  This felt like an exception He would understand.  The home just needed to sell for enough to cover the debts the house incurred.  I would be content with whatever happened, but please Lord, let us break even.  

We finished projects and finished our school year and cleaned and packed and I worried.  Leah and her brother, Adrian Alejandro, worked to calm my nerves.  At every opportunity they reassured me and helped me see the bigger picture.  The day came and the house was on the market.  4 days later it was under contract.  My home was essentially sold in four days for so much more than I had hoped.  

Yesterday the home became someone else’s property.  Yesterday we paid off 23 years of debt.  Yesterday I wept with relief and with joy.  I have no idea what really planted the hairbrained scheme of buying a home to “give me something to do,” but it worked, we’re done, there’s a new path ahead.  I would never recommend someone follow my lead.  Our timing was strangely perfect.  We bought at the best time to buy and we sold at the best time to sell.  Maybe it wasn’t my idea at all.  Maybe the Lord had mercy on me by giving me this work, knowing that the struggle and strife would mold me into someone new.  

I’m not yet sure where I go from here, but I do know I will go in peace and serve the Lord.  Thanks be to God.