August is shaping up to be a fine month to move

**I don’t have any pictures for this post. For today, words speak a thousand words; not pictures. **

Our house buying journey started when we signed the contract in April.

For the first 2 weeks after that I couldn't sleep because my head was buzzing with all the things I wanted to do. I was so excited and happy, I felt like my heart was going to explode.

As you can imagine, that got old really fast. I had to learn to push all that excitement deep down so I could get through each day without dying. But that didn't mean we stopped stalking the house. It became a nightly ritual after dinner to take the dog on a walk so we could walk by and make sure it was still there.

 Yep. Still there. Still not ours.

In order to help my brain feel like some sort of progress was being made, I put a countdown app on my tablet only to gasp in horror when I entered the date we were working towards and saw '135 days' appear. 135 days?! That’s an ETERNITY. Will I even still be alive after 135 days?? Drama. And scene.

That became one more thing I had to learn to forget about in order to prevent myself from dying. We had mini-celebrations for the 90 day mark and the 60 day mark but they were half-hearted celebrations. 

“Yaaay…we still have a long time to wait.”

A while ago Mortgage Guy called Brian and said he was worried about the rapidly-rising mortgage rates. We were still too far out to lock in our rate and it seemed like they were going up daily. I asked Brian if we should be worried. He said we were fine so far but that every time the rate went up 1/8^th of a point, we would owe $20 more each month. Not cool, Ben Bernanke, not cool.

Mortgage Guy asked Brian if it was okay with us for him to call the owners to see if they would be willing to let us close early so we could lock in the rate and then they could rent from us until they were ready to move. Luckily, the owners are very nice and said, “Whatever the kids need” and so we were able to close last Friday. But again, it felt like a half-hearted celebration. “Yaaay…we own a home we can’t live in”.

HOWEVER, we did get some good news.  They have told us they plan to have everything out of the house by August 15 so we can start painting and moving things in. They’ll still have another load of stuff in the garage that they will come back for but, YAY. That’s 3.5 weeks sooner than originally planned! It feels so good to have a more concrete date to plan for. 

After letting some of my excitement bubble back up to the surface, I sobered up and realized: 

Aw crap. Now we need to start packing and actually do all of that stupid moving stuff.

Last night I actually did pack one box, which is a big deal because I am horrible at packing. It makes me turn into a whiny 4 year old and I hate it with a passion. It’s on my list of least favorite activities right behind “Going to the DMV”, “Seeing people in Character Costumes”,  and “Looking at pictures of Justin Bieber”.  In the past, I usually end up sitting on the couch ignoring the fact that Brian is doing all the packing. My only redeeming quality is that I enjoy unpacking, so that ends up restoring some balance in our marital universe.

After I packed my box, through a divine act of kindness and grace, we ran out of packing tape and I rejoiced that I had an excuse to stop.

I have been so whiny I even got Brian to get quotes from movers. Do you know what a big deal that is? Brian willing to look into paying someone for something we can do for free?!? The quotes came back at over $1,000. Man, they sure know how to rip off lazy people. I’m too young and healthy to pay that kind of money for someone to move my collection of beloved crap so that was the end of that.

I can’t wait to be settled. I know this is completely within my control, but my line of thinking this year has been one of displacement. Yes, we unpacked and took things out of boxes but I mentally never unpacked or settled in. I have tended to hold off on doing things with the thought, “I’ll do that when we move”.  

I've basically been rotating through the same set of outfits each season because I have felt it’s best to wait until we move to really make the effort to iron or actually create a new outfit. I even went on a laundry strike for a while but soon realized it was not going to work to wait 100 days until we moved to do my laundry. I really wish I were kidding.

The biggest piece we've been holding off on is starting our adoption process.

I mentioned before in a post about my struggle with wanting to adopt and I’m thankful that the journey has continued and I've come a long way since then. I most definitely feel that this is the path God is calling me (us) to walk down and I feel grateful (and terrified) that God has chosen this for us. All I can do is say, “Yes” and trust that God is more knowledgeable about what I can handle than I am, because I’m pretty doubtful most of the time.

I keep thinking about Moses when he asked God why on earth He would pick him for the job because he wasn't eloquent and was slow to speak. I don’t know that I’ll ever fully understand why on earth God wants to use me, someone who is terrified of other people most of the time, to take in ‘strange’ children. Just this past weekend I panicked before going to a social gathering and almost refused to get out of the car- and we had driven 3 hours specifically for this event and it was to go see people I already knew. If there’s anyone more unqualified for this job, I’d be surprised.

During our search for a house, many of the homes were barely big enough to comfortably start a family and I started to feel depressed. It started to feel like maybe we’re just not meant to be parents at all. Then our house showed up and when I discovered it had 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms, I was totally psyched. “I GET TO HAVE A FAMILY!”

God has been very present for us throughout the past year, with the move here and with molding my heart to fit his plans for me. I really think we’re on the brink of some pretty awesome stuff. Totally hard stuff, but totally awesome stuff. I hope I survive.

On a lighter note, I promised the universe (and Brian) that I wouldn’t cut my hair until we moved into a house. I cannot wait to be free of these stringy locks. Good riddance.