Happy House-Aversary!

First of all, it's National Pie Day, so don't let the opportunity to celebrate pass you by! :) I think the idea is that you eat just one piece and not the whole thing, but you know...whatever!

Today is a Shafferland versary. It marks two years since we purchased our home here in Kokomo. I've been doing some major reflecting on that lately, because it fits in with some speaking I'm about to do, and my heart is still so overwhelmed by all God did in that season for us.

I remember when we first made an appointment to see this house. I refused to have a connection to it. We had appointments on the books to see two other homes in Kokomo in the weeks leading up to this house-viewing, and both were canceled at the last minute because the homes sold out from under us. The first one just about leveled me. I cried (HARD) for an entire day. By the time Ryan got home from work, I had nearly made myself sick, and my face was swollen to about twice its normal size. The second one was disappointing but not devastating.

But those losses made me refuse to commit to this place. I didn't want to like it or love it because I was certain that would make me lose it.

And then I liked it. A lot. Almost to a love-level.

I think both of us panicked a little bit. We loved the house, it felt like home, and we were scared to death it would fly out from under us just like the others. Never mind that it had been on the market forever. Now that we liked it, we figured everyone else would too.

So we prayed (literally on our knees) and went on a wild adventure of faith, waiting to see what God would do.

He said yes.

It was all so fast. I remember being grateful He'd led me away from full-time work about six months before, because otherwise our move would have been far more chaotic and void of any form of organization. Every single day, Ryan would go to work, and I would make my way through the house, purging, packing, adding pages to my famous moving binder. (By the way, I used that thing just the other day to find a box in the attic. Make fun all you want. It. Was. Worth. It.)

We waited for everything to align, and God orchestrated it all so beautifully. The paperwork showed up on time, the approvals went through without issue, and we watched the story unfold before us. (And I scrapbooked like mad to keep up with it.)

I still remember the day we sat in The River coffee shop in North Webster, and our Realtor called with the news that it was time to schedule the closing on our new house. We were sitting in that coffee shop because Ryan was going to work a retreat for the weekend and it was our last date before I had to leave him for four days. I still can't talk about it. ;)

I like to think God even orchestrated that piece of beautiful news to come our way before we had to do the thing we hate the most in life: be apart. It kept us going throughout the weekend, because we knew we were one step closer to an exciting new chapter in our story together.

Here's what I wrote in our scrapbook: Looking back, if I had been paying attention the fact that it was Pi Day, I would have had us celebrate with pie, despite the fact that I'm not supposed to be eating pies these days! Our closing was scheduled for 9:00 a.m. in Kokomo. Ryan went to work, and I followed shortly thereafter, picked him up, and we drove out to the title company! It was the first day after Daylight Savings, so I was quite groggy and a little cranky, too. We waited while the sellers went to sign away the house, and then Cathy went with us so we could sign...and sign...and sign our lives away. Poor Cathy. She was so sick that day, and I could tell she just felt miserable, but she was a trooper and stuck with us and documented our entire process. We were so excited to know the house was ACTUALLY ours! When we got ready to leave, the sellers told us they hoped to be out of it by Saturday, even though they had fifteen days to move out. We were excited and yet freaked out to know that we might have possession of the new house before the week was OVER!

Well, it ended up taking a couple days longer than that, but this day was still so sweet for us. Our first ever bought-it-together home was really ours. I think the smiles say it all.

And here we are, two years later, all settled in and barely able to remember the stresses and hassles of the commuting life. (We remember enough to know we don't want to do it again.) 

We are grateful to be here. We love this home and we love the simplicity it brought to our crazy, mixed-up world.

Happy House--Aversary to us and happy Pi(e) Day to EVERYONE!