Over 5 years ago, Dave and I, as a newly engaged couple, signed a contract to have our first home built from the ground up.

It was so much fun to go and pick out every thing from cabinets to door knobs for our home. It was so exciting to drive by the property and see the progress made as our home was being built.

Dave moved in after closing and I moved in just a couple months later after our wedding. We spent our first night together, our wedding night, in our home. Over the next two years, we saw many negative pregnancy tests. And, eventually, we brought our first daughter, Little Bug, to our home. Two years and two months later, we welcomed Sweet Pea. I have spent the past almost 3 years taking care of our children in this home. I have enjoyed keeping up the house and being a homemaker.

Lots of special memories have been made in this home.

We knew the day would come when we would possibly outgrow this house as our family grew. And, that time has come. We certainly haven’t outgrown this house now, but we would really like to find a house and move closer to the area of town that Dave works. And, should God lead us to adopt again in the future, one more bedroom sure would be nice.

We’ve actually been considering moving for about a year now. Every once in a while, we look at websites to see what is for sale in the area we would like to move.

About a couple months ago, we started looking again. We found this beautiful house in the perfect location.

I think we both could picture ourselves living there when we saw this:

Deck off the master bedroom overlooking water. It was beautiful!

Dave called the agent to see if we could take a look at the house. He was told it was already under contract. We were pretty bummed.

The next day, Dave just didn’t feel that the person he had spoken with knew what he was talking about, so he called someone else, and sure enough, the house was not under contract.

So, we made an appointment to go take a look inside the house. This house was only 500 square feet bigger than our current house, but the way Dave and I saw it was, if this house had three decent sized bedrooms, we were willing to give up the extra bedroom to be on that property in that perfect location. It’s not the end of the world if two kids end up having to share a bedroom.

Well, we walked upstairs to take a look at the bedrooms and…

…they were closet-size! Seriously! The bedrooms in our current home are way bigger! I could not picture Little Bug and Sweet Pea sharing either of those rooms as teenagers. We were bummed…again.

You just don’t find a house in the city without neighbors breathing down your back. To the left of this house was the beautiful pond area and to the right, the nearest neighbor’s house was a good distance away. That house really was on the perfect property.

The up and down of dealing with this house was another reminder to me that God is in control of this house hunting business just like He was in control of our adoption journey.

It has been cool to take the truths I learned while walking that road and apply it to something like trying to find a new house to move in to.

Who knew buying a house could be stressful business filled with ups and downs?!? (Apparently not me! But then again, in my almost 31 years I have moved only twice. Yes, you read that correctly. I moved when I was 2 years old when my dad was transferred to where they live now. And then I moved again when I married Dave at the age of almost 26.)

About a week later, we went to look at another house. Actually, Dave went to look at it by himself because I was sick. When he showed me the picture of the master bedroom closet, I immediately told him he had lost his mind:

That closet was the size of a bedroom!!!

No thank you. I do not want to clean a house that size!

We had planned for me to go back and see the house in person, but then we decided to wait the rest of this year out before looking again.

It is interesting to me that at the time we were looking at these houses it was almost one year ago that we were told by Susan that Melody no longer wanted to work with her. That was April 20th. We let that adoption situation go, assuming that just wasn’t our baby.

Little did we know that 3 weeks later on May 12th, we would officially be match with Melody through our lawyer, Emily, and that baby was indeed our baby – our Sweet Pea!

God is in control of all things.

Home buying included.

And we are trusting him to show us the right house at the right time!

- Elaine