You're Not Going to Believe This, But...

This time I have a really good excuse for not posting for a while. I promise.

Four days after my last post, on a Wednesday night - July 23 to be exact - we got news that the house we were living in was going to be auctioned off in less than two weeks, on Tuesday, August 5. It's a crazy story, but I'll give you the gist of it.

You may or may not remember, the house we were renting was sort of a special situation. Some friends of ours were in the process of buying an old home from a friend of theirs, with the intention of fixing it up to sell it in a couple of years and move to Honduras to live and serve on the mission field. The house had not been lived in for a couple of years because the previous owner, our friends' friend, had had a heart attack which led him to move in with some family members. So he was ready to sell it, for a good price, to get it off of his hands. Our friends thought it would be a good house to flip, so they talked to their bank, to get the buying process started. Their bank pre-approved them for a loan, came to inspect the house and said that it needed some repairs before they would approve the loan for this house. So our friends started working on the house, doing repairs that the bank required, as well as updates that they wanted. But when they were a day away from closing on this house, or so they thought, they were contacted by a lady, another friend, who was looking for renters and knew they had been looking for a new living situation. They were deep in the home-buying process, but loved the property that this woman had up for rent. It was a snazzy house, on 12 acres of land, that was cool enough to feel like a once in a lifetime opportunity. This was where we entered the picture.

Our friends still wanted to buy and flip the fixer upper they were in the process of buying, but they wanted to live in casa de fancy. They knew we had been looking for a place to rent, so they contacted us, and the rest was history.

Or so we thought.

A couple of things went wrong. First, the bank that said "fix these things, then we'll approve you" came back to the house, approved the repairs and said "looks good - we'll get right back to you". And then a few days later said, "okay, we're all set except for this one form". Then a week later said "we're all set except for this old tax return". Then a week later... you see where I'm going. After almost 8 weeks of all this, during which we were moving into and starting what we thought was our next chapter, in said house, they came to our friends and said that because the wife started working part time when they had their baby, they were denying the loan. Not cool.

But if that were the only problem, it would have sucked for our friends, but we could have just changed whose name we were writing on our rent checks. Paying their friend, who is also an acquaintance of ours, to continue to live there.

But this was not the only problem. As we came to find, on that notorious Wednesday night, our friends' friend had stopped making payments on the house as soon as our friends expressed interest in buying it, which was months ago. He was told by his "realtor guy" that a contract being put down on the home would stop any foreclosure process from beginning. So while our friends were putting their blood, sweat and retirement fund into fixing up this abandoned home, the bank was getting grumpy, and eventually decided to seize it. It was set to be sold at auction on August 5.

Thirteen days. That is how long we had before the doors were locked and we were homeless. Now that was the worst case scenario, but we wanted to prepare for the worst and act accordingly. So we jumped into action. We got in touch with the realtor who helped us find our original rental property, and we bought boxes and got to packing. We went house hunting on Friday afternoon, turned in an application Friday night, were approved on Wednesday afternoon and moved on Saturday morning, August 2nd.

Since then, it's been a weird month. Honestly, it's been a challenge. The new place is... okay. I don't love it yet, but I'm also not going to complain about it. This is what the Lord provided, and it's where we belong right now.

I will, however, take a moment to complain about boxes. Freaking freak. We have been in a constant state of packing and unpacking for waaaaaaaay too long. And since this second move, our weekends have been full enough that we haven't had much focused time to spend on unpacking. My weekdays are full because of school starting. I've been working all day every day and then some. And we were out of town, all three of us, the weekend after the move. Then the next weekend, our Saturday was taken up with a training event at church. And then last weekend, we had plans with our church group. But I ended up bailing. I hit my limit. I cannot handle the boxes anymore. So Brett went to the event and I unpacked all last Saturday. And now this weekend, my mission is to finish. No more cardboard. It's time to feel at home. Labor Day weekend will be a labor of unpacking. Today showed a lot of progress. And I've got a plan for tomorrow. We will get done. Oh yes. We will.

I've got a lot more to say - the move is far from the only thing that's been filling up my heart and mind lately - but this is the story that I wanted to tell tonight. Pray for us this weekend - that we will accomplish our goals and God will give us peace.

I hope your Labor Day weekend is restful and fun!