Shafferland on the Move

I hadn't necessarily planned to talk about this in blogland yet, but since it's been on Facebook, I know some of you are wondering what in the world is going on with the crazy Shaffers.

Good. Question.

You guys, this is such a big story - and we are excited to tell you the FULL story as it continues to unfold, but today I shall just give you the background and the prayer request.

When I hired in at WBCL, I immediately put my house on the market, because I had no intentions of being a commuter. I hate driving, and I hate winter. Never once did I imagine - even for half a second - that the house would not sell. But it didn't. Not for a year and a half. And by that time, I was engaged to Ryan, and we decided selling a house AND getting married all at once wasn't the best idea for us. So we let the listing expire and got married.

What most of you probably do not know is that in the three years that we've been married, our house has been listed a total of three more times, once just by us, and twice by agents. And again: nothing. I didn't talk about it as much on here the other times because I figured there was no need to wear you ALL out with our real estate drama.

So to recap: in five years, the house has been listed a total of four times and it's never sold.

When our most recent listing expired in December, Ryan and I gave up. We figured God just must not want us to move, and we said we would be okay with being here and enjoying the blessing this house is {and has been!} to us. Ironically, though Ryan was the one most inconvenienced by our location {which still makes him a significant commuter}, I was the one who really had to surrender hard to be truly content staying. And I reached the place where I could say it and mean it. Truly.

***

About a year before I resigned from the station, I reached my personal commuter saturation point. After two particularly hard winters of driving, I just couldn't do it anymore. I would get in my car at 6:45 every morning, buckle in and know that I had to drive for the next hour. And at 4:15 every afternoon, I did it all over again. No matter the weather, no matter how I felt, no matter how hard the day had been, no matter how much I still had to do that evening, the drive loomed. I adored my job, but I reached the point when I could not get in that car for an hour one. more. time.

At first I thought the restlessness was just because I hated driving. But then I realized that even if I loved to drive, I had reached the point where commuting just didn't fit for me anymore. It didn't fit for us anymore. And God continued to use other situations to confirm what began with that inkling. And as He orchestrated the opening and closing of doors one at a time, the day came when I turned in my resignation letter.

The same weariness of a long commute that I experienced back then has {at last} settled over Ryan, too. His drive is equally long and tiresome, and the time has come. I recognized it in him maybe even before he recognized it in himself. Even though he enjoys driving and this winter hasn't been all that bad, the hours lost on the road have taken their toll.

And so it is, that right about the time we decided we were meant to stay, God unmistakably opened the door for us to go. We are walking into a new chapter in bold faith, but there is a huge piece of this story that we would love you to join us in praying about: the sale of our current home. We believe God has a plan, and we are eager to see just how He chooses to reveal it. Will you pray specifically with us that this house will sell without ANY of the drama that selling Ryan's house entailed?

We know this house doesn't have a history of selling, but we serve a God Who is not the least bit bothered by that detail. So we choose to trust, believing He can make a way where one has not existed before.