New House

 I have moved 22 times in my life! Most of it was back and forth from Florida and Georgia for a total of 17 years in Florida, 13 in Georgia, 2 in California, 7 in Tennessee, and coming up on 2 in Illinois.  I was born in Louisiana, but we moved to Florida when I was just a few months old.  

We were so surprised to see God moving us to Illinois.  We thought we would probably stay in Tennessee forever!  It didn’t have the traffic like Atlanta or the weather like Florida.  And we made some really good friends there.  We loved the area.  But we started to put in job applications through the USA gov jobs website.  This was because of Lucas.  After he was denied heart surgery at Vanderbilt there wasn’t a hospital in all of Tennessee for him.  He had two heart surgeries in Boston in 2019 - one in April and then we came home.  But he was flighted back there in June after being on a vent for a month at our hospital in East Tennessee and had his second surgery in July.  

So we decided to pick about a dozen states with exactly two criteria - each state had to have family in it and each state had to be within four hours of a pediatric heart surgeon.  We put in tons of applications.  One of these states happened to be Illinois.  Sean was born here, but moved away while still a newborn, however, he still has family here.  But then we got back home to Tennessee after his second surgery and we got settled and sort of forgot about it.  Until Sean got a call from the North Chicago VA requesting a phone interview.  We said sure, not thinking much about it.  Well two days later they called and offered him a job while he was at work.  This was around 3:30 on a Friday.  About 20 minutes later he was called in to the front office at his job.  And fired.  So that was a clear door closing/door opening God moment for us.  Everything was a whirlwind after that and well now here we are.  

We decided to rent because we weren’t sure if he’d like his job, we’d like being in Illinois, etc.  And while there are a couple of negative things (like there would be anywhere), there are so many things we like about this place.  And Sean has a great job that he enjoys.  

BUT we were still sure we weren’t supposed to be here for good or make this “our place”.  We thought about California to be by my mom, Colorado next to Sean’s parents, or Florida for my Dad and family down there.  So we start praying and asked for God to show us through scripture if He wanted us to stay in Illinois.  And you know what?   He did!  Praise Him.  He gave us: 

Deuteronomy 1:21

New International Version

21 See, the Lord your God has given you the land. Go up and take possession of it as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, told you. Do not be afraid;do not be discouraged.”

Joshua 1:6

Be strong and courageous, for you shall cause this people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers to give them.

Psalm 19:7

7  oThe law of the Lord is perfect,3

previving the soul; 

qthe testimony of the Lord is rsure, 

smaking wise tthe simple;

So, we contacted our real estate agent to ask her advice, well aware of the fact that we didn’t HAVE to move until May 2023 when our rental lease is up where we are currently living.  But I love looking at houses so we started looking at all the listings she was sending and I would Google houses everyday.  We went and looked at a few, but with this crazy market most were gone so quickly that it didn’t even matter.  

Then we found a house we loved.  We called our landlords and they said we could break the lease as long as we moved out by the end of July.  We got all of our paperwork in, in a few hours and got the offer in.  But there were six other offers and after waiting for close to a week, we found out we didn’t get it.  

We had about a week left before we just had to give up and wait until spring time to start seriously looking again.  We set our deadline for July 1st for stopping looking.  

We had seen another house we sort of liked, but dismissed it twice because of taxes, price, and the preserve behind it, but about a week or so after first seeing it and forgetting about it, the image of that house just seemed to pop in my head so I cautiously told Sean about it, thinking maybe it was the Holy Spirit, and we decided it wouldn’t hurt to go look at it.  So we went.  On July 1st.  Our deadline date.  We loved it and put in an offer July 2nd and the offer was accepted!  So we are supposed to close the end of the month.  Praying for good inspections and appraisal and a smooth transition.  

We are so excited to be getting to our forever home!  We had also asked God for another scripture confirmation that we should get this house and He gave us: 

Isaiah 61:7

“For your shame ye shall have double; and for confusion they shall rejoice in their portion: therefore in their land they shall possess the double: everlasting joy shall be unto them.” 

I am humbled by the Lord’s kindness towards mankind.