House Hunting and Banana Bread

You may be wondering what in the world house hunting has to do with banana bread, and I don't blame you.  Hold on to your socks and be patient with me and I'll try to explain my craziness :)

. . . .

Chuck and I have been living in his mom's basement for two and a half years. For most of that time, we've been talking about moving out. . . not because we didn't feel welcome, but because we didn't picture starting our family in a one-bedroom apartment. I won't bore you with the details, but some of our stay here in this wonderful home was out of family-need-necessity. Then some of it was because of financial-need-necessity. Then it was due to can't-find-a-house-we-wanted-necessity.

I talked a little bit about some of the frustration a while back in this post HERE.

And then in this post HERE, you found out that we bought dirt. A lot of dirt. And weeds.

But this post doesn't deal very much with the house we're building because there's nothing more to say than what's already been said. It's still dirt. Permits take a small eternity to come to fruition. The end.

This post is more about squishing bananas. After all, you can't make banana bread without first squishing perfectly beautiful bananas, right?

{picture source}

Back when things just weren't working out the way I had pictured in my head, I kept comparing our situation to squished bananas.

For example, we'd had our eye on a certain area in a certain city for over a year and found out that we could build a house on one of the few remaining lots for suuuuper cheap. We met with our Realtor and the builder's Realtor and worked out an offer to submit. To make a long, slightly depressing post shorter, we and the builder just couldn't agree on a price and so we dropped it.  It was hard to feel so confident about something only to have it not work out.

In other words, our first banana got squished.

{picture source}

Some time later, our Realtor sent me a house to view online. It was slightly out of our price range, but not by much. He just wanted us to see how much more house we could get for not a whole lot more money. It opened our eyes, and we agreed to look at the home.

Turns out its price had just recently been lowered, and it was a STEAL. It was beautiful; we liked the area; we loved the garage. We decided to put in an offer that night, but as Murphey's Law demands, someone else beat us to it by 45 minutes.

They allowed both parties to resubmit a counteroffer and whomever bid the highest would be chosen. If anyone has ever had a similar situation happen, they know how stressful that is. The entire night was spent thinking things like, "Well, if we bid THIS, what if they bid THAT?" and "What if we bid super high, and they just drop out?"

It's a miracle I survived without any holes in my stomach.

We prayed together and prayed separately and came together with the same figure in mind. Bingo. It must be right. We felt confident in our offer. . . after all, it turned out to be somewhat higher than the listed price. I remember being SO sure. It just felt right.

Long story short, we were outbid by less than $1,000.

Cue the second banana being squished.

{picture source}

We were mightily confused, to say the least. We were beginning to wonder if we were crazy to feel peace about our choices when they kept blowing up in our face.

About a month later, we got a call from our Realtor saying that due to the appraisal coming back significantly lower than the amount offered, the people who originally outbid us would more than likely be forfeiting their claim on the property. They had until later that evening to decide one way or the other. Yet again, we thought we were golden. It was as though Heavenly Father was confirming our earlier sense of peace. . . you know, testing our faith to see if we would stand true to our first feelings and that sort of thing.

SPLAT! went the third banana when they decided to keep the house after all.

{picture source}

Well, let's just say that we had quite a few additional squished bananas on our path to finding the home we're building today, but that's just it. If we happened to settle for something along the path to where we are or if any of our other choices worked out, we wouldn't have what we have now. Does that make sense?

The Lord had to take our pretty bananas and squash them in order to make banana bread. And I will be forever grateful that he loved my little family enough to put us through some tough, trying years in order to bless us with something far beyond our expectations.

{picture source}

So if you find bananas being smashed in your own life, just remember that it's quite possible that the Lord is merely preparing something far more marvelous for you in the future.