The Perfect House

I've never been a super patient person.  I'm not sure what parent to blame that on, but for as long as I can remember, I've not been a fan of waiting.  I was always the kid on the road trip asking my parents a million times over, "How much longer until we get there," five minutes into the trip.  It only got worse the older I got, as I impatiently waited to find out if I made the volleyball team, waited to see if I got the job I applied for, or waited for my now husband to propose to me.  I never liked waiting.

Our infertility journey was a "wait" that at times almost broke me.  There were so many days where I felt like giving up on God (start at the very beginning of this blog journey), giving up on the dreams and desires I believed he had planted inside of me, and giving up on the idea that he had a plan and the plan was good.  Years of struggling with infertility and 25 months of waiting to be matched in an adoption process has a way of testing your level of patience.

Yesterday, I stood in the middle of a house that I had hoped would be "the one."  It wasn't the first time either.  For the past two months, our family has been searching for a house that we could buy.  I guess I was naive to think that we would just search Zillow, pick out the dream house that's in our price range, call our realtor, and buy it (living in parsonages...aka church houses...your whole life will do that to you).  Apparently, it's a little more complex than that.  There's bidding, higher bidding, and the person who bids highest gets to stop being impatient.  So far, that's not been me.

This morning, I kind of panicked.  We've been renting an airbnb from a family at church and it's AMAZING!  They've been super kind to us, and it's perfect for this season.  But we need to be in a house by the summer so that the kids can enroll in a school this Fall.  The pressure was real this morning and truth be told, that house yesterday seemed pretty awesome.  It was beautiful inside and out, well maintained, freshly painted, and move in ready.  Anyone who would have seen it would have said, "Yes!  I'll take it!"  There was just one problem.  Nate and I both knew in our heart of hearts it wasn't the one.

We've talked about what's most important to us in choosing a house.  It isn't finding a house that has the best appliances, or a house that is perfectly painted.  It's not finding house with a white picket fence or a freshly renovated bathroom.  It's finding a house that we will be able to do life with people.  A house big enough to entertain friends and get to know our neighbors.  A house with enough space to open our home to someone who might need it.  A house that will allow our kids to play, create memories, and invite friends to do the same.  A house that sits in a neighborhood and school system with different cultures.  A house where God sized dreams can come to fruition and we get to be a small part of it.

As I stood in the middle of that house yesterday, I couldn't help but think back to my infertility journey.  While "waiting" almost broke me, it was "waiting," that became one of my greatest teachers.  I learned the truth about God's goodness, the steadiness of God's faithfulness, and in the end, experienced the joy of letting God's sized dreams come to fruition.

If I'm honest, some days the waiting gets the best of me, and I find myself reverting back to my five year old self, asking God with wide eyes, "How much longer?"  But then I remember what happens when we wait.  So tonight, I'm choosing to embrace the wait.  And while I wait, I'm praying for those God sized dreams to come to fruition.


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