I have a love story to tell you. It’s not because of Valentine’s Day this week or because my husband and my anniversary was last month. In all honesty, the kind of love story I’ve been thinking of is probably out of left field for most. We love God, we love our family, and we love our friends, but I’ve been thinking about loving other areas of life, despite their imperfections.
I am a deep feeler and when things in life aren’t going as planned or at least ideally, I find it hard to be content. I tend to think things are wrong just because they are not perfect. This may sound selfish and silly, but I truly believe it is partly how God made me. Do things right. Do things well. Go big or go home.
One of the areas God has been teaching me to love well (but also find contentment, rest, and trust in Him when things are not perfect) is in my home.
Home ownership is not for the faint of heart and as ridiculous as it sounds, even though we’ve been in our home less than a year, I’ve fallen in and out of love with it. We’ve hit a few bumps in the road since moving into our home. Some have been expected and planned for, like installing a radon mitigation system, replacing rotten boards on our deck and back steps, and replacing nine windows, while other bumps were not so expected.
When we first moved into our home, I knew it had flaws but I was in love. I dreamed of painting almost every room in the house and painting all the kitchen cabinets. It was fun to dream and I was pretty convinced I was a Joanna Gaines in the making. (Hilarious, I know, but binge watching enough Fixer Upper can do that to you.) However, we decided one of our first priorities would be replacing rotten windows, so we could actually open nice windows (with screens) to have proper ventilation when we did paint.
I knew windows weren’t cheap, but some of the quotes we got really surprised me. A few different salesmen told my husband and I that the type of windows we buy might have to do with how long we think we’ll stay in our house. They recommended cheaper models if we thought we’d move in three to five years and maybe the pricer models if we thought we would live in our house for 20-30 years. Cost wise, I know this is what most people consider when making large purchases for their home, but for me personally, and for our specific situation, it made me feel icky. Again, maybe it’s the perfectionist in me, but I wanted things done well and right.
Within the first month or so of living in our house, my husband and I consistently found issues with our home where things had not been done by professionals and if they had, the professional clearly didn’t know what they were doing and did it wrong. Our house was not well loved and I felt like God was asking us to take care of this house. At first, it didn’t feel right. Issues with our house weren’t our fault. Maybe we just happened to buy a bad house that wasn’t taken care of. But God repeatedly let me know, “This is not your fault but this is your responsibility.” So, we waited a little while, scrapped some more money together and bit the bullet and went with one of the nicer windows, and more expensive quotes. This pushed out our deadline and between that and some other repairs put my dreams of “fun” projects on hold until at least spring.
We felt good about our purchase and thoroughly enjoyed working with the company we chose, even if our bank account was significantly depleted. We were thankful we could pay for our repairs and improvements in cash and knew we were being obedient.
UNTIL… We needed to replace our furnace and A/C two weeks before Christmas. We knew the furnace was old and would not last forever, but it had been inspected (before we closed on our home) twice and “all was well”. I knew deep down that this was not a surprise to God and He wasn’t up in Heaven going, “Oh Crap! They prayed about buying this house and I told them to do it. They prayed about what to repair first and what quality of work to go with and I told them to take good care of their house, but now the furnace crapped out in the middle of winter with their savings account completely depleted?! I DID NOT see this coming!”
Even though I knew this didn’t surprise God, there were times I certainly let it overwhelm me. As a planner and a saver, I knew (especially with a baby on the way) we should be saving money and not financing a major home repair. We diligently saved for cash for everything (excluding the purchase of our home) and having to finance something really made me feel like we failed and were ill-prepared.
Again, we were faced with some different options in replacing our furnace and again, I felt like we needed to take care of our house as best as we were able, not only for us but for the future owners as well. So, we had a beautiful, energy efficient furnace installed that has run like a champ through several windchill advisories in the months to follow.
Throughout the last few months, I haven’t always felt so in love with my home. I knew this was the house God prepared for us but as more and more crap hit the fan, I would be tempted to ask God, “Are you sure THIS is OUR house???” I started thinking about minimal things to paint to make the house look more updated and thought maybe we would move in three years. The enemy gave me his best at trying to convince me we were so stupid for buying a house, so stupid for me quitting my job, and so stupid for us to be having a baby when we aren’t more financially stable. But the more I take our circumstances back to God’s truth and promises and the more I have chosen to love our house, despite it’s flaws, the more in love with it I am and the more peace I have about this season of life and the journey God has brought us on so far.
I no longer lay awake at night worrying about what will break next or how we will afford to fix what already needs fixing, but instead I can’t shut off my brain off wondering whether or not we should paint the trim throughout the entire house. I pull out my blueprints I sketched on our back deck one hot summer day dreaming of the addition we would someday build (you know when we win the lottery or something haha). We may not be here in three or five years or we may be here until we retire. I honestly don’t know, but one thing I have learned in the first seven months of living here is even in materialistic things like caring for your house, love is a choice. You can choose to take care of the things God has blessed you with. As I’ve chosen to love and care for my home, the self-pity and bitterness toward previous owners has subsided. The spark is reignited and I am in love and dreaming again!