So we have taken our house off the market.  All factors pointed in that direction. 

I am SO RELIEVED!!!!!

What a great weight has been lifted off my shoulders.  No more living on the edge of constant "What if's..."   It's over.

For now!

The housing market was slow when we listed last September.  The bottom has since fallen out of it!  We have been watching all the houses in the area repeatedly lower their prices, to the point that we would need to do the same to stay competetive.  But then we'd be losing our shirts.  And since we don't "have" to sell - we're not in any danger of losing our house to the bank or anything - it would be silly to keep playing this game right now.  So we took it off the market, and will re-evaluate the situation next spring.

Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to our summer, and making plans, and just relaxing!  My oldest son will get to go to camp again (which he is SO looking forward to!), and we are taking our hoped-for trip to Disney in the fall.

And now back to your regularly scheduled life....!

The camp in Oregon that we had our eye on last fall has posted a need for a maintenance guy again!  I  know our plans are in the Lord's hands but it is SO hard to look at a place like this, that we'd love to go to, and remain sitting here bound by this house....!!!!  It's a beautiful place.  Oregon is also an "orange" state on the HSLDA map, and has even lighter requirements than here in NH.

I'm SO ready for this move.  It has been a long, long road to travel.

We did get an offer on the house, everything was going through when - bam! - the guy lost his job, just like that!  I actually feel worse for them; they were first-time buyers and so excited about the house.  But their financing from the bank was based on both their incomes, so it all fell through.

I am not as disappointed as you would think I'd be.  I'm not even sure why that is!  We waited so long, and to get this close and have it all fall apart....  But I'm just not!  I don't really know what the Lord is up to.  I started to get annoyed, like "Why, after all we've been through, would You bring us this far and then take it away?!"...but then I pulled my wits about me and thanked Him that WE are not the ones who just faced a major loss of income!!  My DH has a great job.  Some days I wonder why we're trying so hard to change things, and I know that in the long run we're wanting a change in lifestyle, but right now with things as they are, is this the time to make such a change?  We don't put our trust in a job, or panic over the economic forecasts, for we know that God is in control of all aspects of our lives.  We were thinking with this almost-sale of our house, that the Lord was really showing His control by allowing us to sell our house in the dead of winter, in a "bad" housing market, in a failing economy.  But, just because it didn't work out doesn't mean He's not still in control!

But, we now face the decision of what to do after our contract is up next month.  Do we renew for another six months, see what happens, and take it off the market in the fall if nothing happens by then (I don't want to be trying to sell over another winter & holiday period).  Or do we take it off the market entirely next month and wait it out for another year?....see if the market/economy improve?  Lots to pray about over the next few weeks!

We are now in the counter-offer phase. 

Time will tell, but if it all goes through, we are standing at the door to our next big adventure!!

Well, just when I was getting cozy and comfy in my head again, along comes the news that the people who were interested in our house may NOT get the foreclosure that they went for first!  In my mind, I would think that faced with that situation, the bank would take what it could get rather than risk losing more.  Not so, apparently.  Our realtor said that essentially they want every penny they can get in these situations, and she has seen them reject "reasonable" offers on properties!  These folks "low-balled" it, just to see if they could get a good deal, I imagine. 

Sooooo!....when I had, in my head, decided that they as much as got the other place and the 2nd offer would never come our way....watch out!  As much as I'd still hate moving in the dead of winter, the good thing about the bank taking their time and delaying the process is that we won't have to worry about it before Christmas (which would have been the case if they'd just plain offered on our place first).

I guess my song of "Don't Get Comfortable" really does fit!

I'm not having a very good week with regards to the house and moving.  Satan is trying to steal my joy and peace and I don't feel very strong right now.  I've been praying for the Lord to restore the peace I found at my retreat.  It's funny, too, one of the gals did a song from Steven Curtis Chapman called "The Mountain," about those great mountaintop experiences we have - but we can't stay there and need to take what we've learned and bring it down into the valleys.  I'm in a deep, dark valley right now.  The retreat was my mountaintop!  I just keep wondering why, WHY, do these things have to be so long and drawn-out for me?  I understand learning from the waiting, and everything having a purpose, but EVERY time I go through something???  It's getting old.  I'm oh so tired.  I'm mentally and emotionally exhausted.  A year ago I was struggling with the camp search.  Now I don't even really care where we end up, just as long as we get closure to all this soon!  I can't even make any plans for 2008 because I have NO idea where we'll be!  I feel like my entire life is on hold.

Wow...!   You have no idea (well, yes you do, actually!!) how your words spoke to me.  Thank you for being obedient to the Lord's prompting and posting here.  I did see your original comment (though I had to go looking for it!) and when I came back today and saw it again, reposted in my most recent entry, I said "Lord, you must really be trying to drive home this point!" 

It is SUCH a timely message for me.  I actually just came back from a retreat weekend at the camp here in NH that we'd hoped to move to.  It was a fun, relaxing scrap booking weekend, but it was also a very spiritual time for me.  The Lord used the time away to minister to my spirit (I couldn't even call home to "check in!"...no cell phone service and the pay phone didn't work for me all weekend!).  The theme of the retreat was "Be Still....And know that I am God."  I felt Him speak that directly to me more than once over the three days.  All the while I was thinking of your words that I had read here:  that as I was faithful to wait and trust in Him, He would do something so awesome that there would be no mistaking His work!  "Be still....and KNOW...that I AM God!" 

"Be still..." - Never mind the house, who's going to buy it or when.  It's in My hands and I'm in control.  Don't fret over where you're going to move.  I already know.

"...and KNOW that I AM God!"  -  I AM going to do something so awesome that you'll have no doubt that I did it.  Know that I am in control.  Know that I want only what's best for you.  Know that I've promised you in my Word, your Bible.  Know that I can make a way where man sees no way!  "I AM." 

That is how He spoke to my heart this past weekend.  I was SO blessed.  And to come back to my blog and see your words repeated where I just couldn't miss them, well...  I'm still being blessed! 

I hope you'll come back and check in and see how things go.  I'd love to be able to share with you exactly what He does one of these days!  Thanks again and God bless you...

...you know He's working!  He may be working in your life, or in the lives of others, but one way or another, He's doing something.

I am so wanting to sell our house - now!  There are so many camp postings in the database right now that we would have 5 or 6 to apply to!!  And they are all so interesting in their own right.  The Adirondacks of New York?....the Oregon coast?....the mountains of southern California?....or how about the Rocky Mountains of Colorado!  *sigh*  If only we could get a contract on this place, with a closing date on the horizon. 

But I've been through this long enough to know that God IS working.  He WILL send a buyer for our house, in His timing, and open the next door, wherever that may be.  I can't say that I want another season of waiting, but at least I know how to get through one! LOL!  It's been almost a year since we first started our camp quest, and what a year it's been.  I know that what I perceive as silence on the Lord's part really isn't that at all.  Our human perspective is so limited but since it's all we know, it can be hard to overcome!

In the words of Bilbo Baggins at the end of The Return of the King:  "I think I'm quite ready for another adventure!"

Wow, what a shocker I had today.  Got a nice little piece of mail from the mortgage company saying our payment will be increasing by around $300 per month starting in August....   WHAT?!!??

Ok, after the initial shock, I remembered that God knew that letter was coming.  I sure didn't, and thus I'm the one who's shaken up. 

Then I remembered the song He gave me last winter, "Don't Get Comfortable" by Brandon Heath.  Hmm...could this be the time for that sentiment??  After all the camp hoop-la, after "deciding" we would stay here another year, could now be the time He is preparing us to go?  Perhaps He's working on a housing solution at the NH camp even now.  If we do end up staying here out of necessity, I trust Him to provide the funds to cover this increase (DH works his tail off as it is with all the overtime he's allowed by law to take, and we just tread water).  The increase is due to a few different factors, but the one that galls us the most is the sudden hike in property taxes.  NH will never, never, ever solve its funding problems with property taxes alone!!!!!!!

So, on that note, I go now to seek Him and some much-needed peace!  And of course I keep remembering Isaiah 55:12 - "You will go out in peace and be led forth in joy...."

Well, here's another monkey wrench in our camp search:  not sure we belong at the NH camp after all!

So here's what's been going on...  We went up over the weekend for another get-away as a family.  Overall we had fun, but DH and I came home with this very vague can't-put-your-finger-on-it feeling that just "wasn't right."  As we began to discuss things, we realized that he has never actually been told exactly what his job will entail - we know its title but nothing more, and it's just a little weird supposedly waiting to start a new job that you really know nothing about!  Needless to say, he'll be instigating a phone call in the near future to see if that can't be cleared up.  The other thing that I think bothers us even more is the housing situation.  We are supposed to be getting this neat little house up there, but it's currently occupied by another family.  They have committed to stay on there through the summer (as they will be needed) but beyond that it seems like they don't know the next step yet, but it's like they are being pushed to make a decision and make one that will send them on their way (which would happen at some point anyway, just not neccessarily now!).  We just had this weird feeling all weekend like "oh, there's the new family that's kicking John and Mary and little baby Jane out of their house...".   NO one wants to feel that way!!  It's not of our doing but none the less, it's disconcerting.  There have been no real attempts to introduce us to the staff, or see how we fit in, and it's like we're just hanging on the outside of it all.  When we looked into going to camp for the very first time, almost 7 years ago, we interviewed with one particular place and it was SO much different in how it was handled.  They had us all come for a long weekend, not only just to meet my husband but to see how ALL of us would fit in there and would all the families involved get along and work well together?  That's really important in this type of job/ministry because you all live there and work there!  We just don't have this sense of belonging at the NH camp, and it goes far beyond just being the newcomers.  I also felt the whole weekend that I needed to keep my kids under wraps and quiet and out of the way.  Well, for goodness sakes I can't do that if we all live there!!  I mean, nobody said anything but it was just how things came across.  There are no other kids that live on-campus (just two babies, who obviously don't get out and about right now!).  How will mine fit in there?....will they fit in there?!

I think right now, as much as DH hates his current job, we are content to just stay put and actually enjoy all the finished work on our house!  We might just sit back for the rest of this year, renew our camp profile around the first of next year, and see what opens up next spring.  Maybe the housing market will be better then, too...who knows.  Our whole extended family is poised to make a move - could very well be out of New England.  We're all being taxed right out of our homes and eventually there is a number that you have to say, "I just can't afford this anymore."  Deep down I think we'd all like to be somewhere in the South, where winter is a little less severe!  Lots to consider and pray about here.  Really the bottom line is that we shouldn't be taking the job here just because DH wants out of his current job so badly, if we aren't going to be a good fit and they are not going to be a good fit for us.