Aaron and I had bought an old two-story, 2600 square foot house that had been vacant for a couple of years and started renovating it. It was in sorry condition. In many years of neglect, the yard had become a mess. We hired someone to help us design what would look nice, then we started in. We landscaped. Expensive!
Then we started inside. The kitchen was original, I think. We gutted it and got a new kitchen. Then we pulled up the carpets and refinished the oak floors and just went room by room and redid the whole house, plumbing, electrical, everything.
Through the course of this Dane was born. We had been there almost five years, had almost finished the whole house, when God woke me up one morning and told me to sell the house. Wow, no God, please, it has taken us almost five years to get the house the way we want it. But, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that it was He speaking to me. I woke up Aaron and told him. He said the same thing about taking five years and all most done, etc. Then he said, "We only have two or three small things to do, let's finish and put it on the market." We did.
We started praying about where God would have us move. I was in real-estate at the time and immediately started looking. We looked in Independence, Lees Summit, Blue Springs, really everywhere. We started making offers.
The second family through our home bought it. We negotiated that we would be able to stay in the house for a month after it closed. We were feverishly looking. And making offers, good offers, not low-dollar. But each one, for one reason or another, never came close to being signed.
My dad wanted us to move to the lake by them, but Aaron and I were city people and didn't want to live that far out of town. But, dad kept insisting that we come look at a lot down the street from him. So one Sunday we drove out and after lunch went to look at the lot. It was not at all what we wanted. Then he insisted that we go talk with Mrs. Wren (her family owned the lake). We called her, she was so sweet and asked us to come over.
Oh my! We drove up into her drive. She had a three-story New England Colonial. We had just sold our two-story New England Colonial. We talked about her house and the house we had just sold. Hers had the same floor plan, just bigger. We really hit it off well. She brought out huge maps of the lake and put them out on her twelve-foot dinning room table. She showed us a couple of lots that she would sell us. Aaron and I knew nothing of the lake except right where Mom and Dad lived. Mrs. Wren had one lot just four doors down from them. I knew right where it was. It was solid forest, you could not even step off the road. She said that at our expense we would have to make sure there was enough square footage to meet city codes and that there was enough fall to attach on to the sewer. But, she would sell it to us for $3,000. What a deal. I knew a surveyor and a plumber. And it had plenty of square footage and just enough fall.
We began frantically looking for a floor plan. I worked with several builders and had huge piles of house plan books. We looked through them many times trying to find one that we liked. None of them seemed right. Then one morning, I had awakened and was sitting in bed praying. As I finished, I reached down to the floor and picked up one of the books that we had been through many times. I flopped it open, there was the perfect floor plan! I called Aaron and told him that I had found a floor plan. He didn't ask anything about it, just said, "Call and order the plans."
We moved just the necessities into a very small two-bedroom apartment and everything else into storage. We started building almost immediately. I had never contracted a house before, but God knew how. He went before us each step of the way.
Val brought out his big 944 and a skid loader. He taught me how to run both of them and the two of us cleared the lot and dug the basement.
The framers said they would knock off money if we would keep the house cleaned out, so each evening Dane (just turned two) and I would go clean and sweep out the mess the builders had made that day. Dane would pick up all the nails and I would pick up the wood scraps. Then we would sweep. We had a good time doing it. We got him a little hammer and taught him to hammer the nails into Styrofoam.
When the finish carpenter said that he needed the fireplace insert, I got in the car and headed to the fireplace store in Lee's Summit. I pulled into the parking lot, sat there and prayed, "Please show me, Lord. I don't know anything about fireplaces." I walked through the store and came around to the door. I had not heard God speak, so I asked him again. Then I started walking again. As I walked, one seemed to stand out. I asked the price. It was just what we had specked for it. I paid for it had it delivered.
A year after we moved in, my dad came running down the street. He asked what kind of fireplace we had, I told him. "Wow," he said, "How did you know what kind to get? I have just been reading and that was the most perfect fireplace you could have gotten for your home." Hey! God is so good.
On a Friday, the framers said that they only had a half day left, so they would finish up on Monday. That Friday Aaron came home to say that Jeff had just quit at the office. That sent Aaron into a spin. Jeff was his partner and they had three hired. We talked and prayed all weekend. Sunday evening we decided that Monday morning he would give everyone there two months notice, at the end of two months we would move the office to our basement, cutting all overhead and just work from there. So, Monday morning when the framers came to finished, I told them that now we were going to frame out the basement. It would have costs considerable more to have called them back after they had packed up all their tools, not to mention the sheetrockers and everyone else. Perfect timing, God.
I had wanted wood floors, but after pricing them (way out of our budget), had budgeted for carpet and linoleum. As we were nearing that part of the building phase, an old friend called and said that he had started installing wood floors and would like to give me a bid on our home. I laughed and told him that it was way too much. He insisted on coming over and did give us a bid. It was for what I had budgeted for carpet for both floors. Wow again. So we decided we could put in wood floors on the main floor, and live on plywood upstairs for a couple of years until we could save enough to put carpet upstairs. It took more like five years before we could afford flooring upstairs, but, by then I had figured out that I was allergic to duct mites and the worst thing for that is carpeting. What a blessing that we didn't have carpet throughout the house. Our only carpeting is in Dane's room and the guest room. Again, God is so good.
It took me a few months to figure out why God had had us sell the house in town and move. God knew that our house payment in town was $768 a month, our taxes and insurance were high. God knew that Jeff would quit, leaving Aaron holding the lease on the building, all the debt they had incurred setting up business and the continual overhead with the rent and salaries. When we moved the office to the basement of our new home, our house payment was $350 a month with much less in insurance and taxes, no office rent, salaries or overhead. We did have $10,000 in debt to pay, but that was do-able living with such low overhead. Way to go God!
I know there were soooo many more testimonies about the move, but I don't recall them at this moment. I should have written them down at that time.
God is so good. He was there each step of the way. And he will be there for you.
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