When I first told one of my friends that our offer had been accepted on a house in Congleton. She was happy for me, but then said, “now the roller coaster begins”

And so it has. I think right now I’m probably coming down the highest hill, with no end in sight. It’s one of those roller coasters that goes all the way underground into a dark scary cavern.

This is all happened so fast. While I was in the states, I knew I was heading home into some sort of limbo, and I was dreading it. My heart longed to be settled, somewhere. To start making a home for my family. I know you can make a home in whatever sort of place you dwell, but there needs to be some sense of permanence about the place, some sense of having arrived. It seems since I left home, I have not lived in any one place for more than two years, and some places I’ve lived less than six months.  Life simply has not stopped. There has always been some big change looming on the horizon, and that’s kind of fun when you’re young, or when that change is something you can get your head around, like marriage, or having a baby, or living overseas for a year….but when that change is inevitable, but unknown, you start to carry around this creeping sense of unsettledness about you, and it eats away at your peace.

So when we found ourselves looking at houses one Saturday shortly after arriving back here in the UK, I was happy, but scared. I could not believe that it was going to just happen like that, so easy. I was even more scared when we seemed to find a house that had most of what we wanted out of a home, and in our price range. It wasn’t just the home either, it was in a location I had previously dismissed in my mind, but was now warming to for a number of reasons. Everything felt really right. I tried to be low key about it, but then I felt guilty for not being positive, for not believing it was going to happen. So then I actually started to get excited. Sure it was stressful, there was tons of paperwork, and anxiety over getting it all completed on time. But overall, I was not too worried. It would have been nice to be able to just give 30 days notice after it was all completed, but our landlord would take no less than a six month lease at a time so this meant we needed to be out by the end of August.

Then last Monday, I got a phone call from the bank. At first it was just sounded like some little niggly jobs I needed to do, but then she said “oh and there is one more thing” right. “the valuer has been to see the house and has valued it at quite a bit less than what you were going to pay for it…” meaning, the bank would not give us the mortgage we’d applied for. We would be looking at upping our deposit, (which was already stretched pretty far) or taking out a different product with rubbish interest rates. Right. Ok. It did not help that it was Jon’s birthday and he was out with Iona at the time watching a movie. Suddenly our run of happy days came to a grinding halt.

The vendor of the house was already quite grumpy for having bought the house two years ago for a certain price and already he was losing money on it. The estate agent we’d been dealing with seemed pretty defensive of the current price and did not really seem keen to help us out at all. He was supposedly talking to the vendor all this week but then admitted to Jon on Friday that the vendor was actually on holiday in Poland and that he hadn’t spoken to him until that day. The valuation was challenged but unfortunately due to the current market, it looks like the valuer was right based on the price of other properties sold in the same area in the last six months.

So basically…the vendor will not come down in price, and we can not afford to up our deposit anymore, and in reality do not want to overpay for the house. I suppose the bank views any house purchase as an investment…which this one really isn’t…it seems to have reached it’s ceiling of value…but…for us, we’re just looking for a home….not something to “do up and sell in five years time”

So then on top of all this, I get a call from the letting agency from this house wanting to take some “desperate woman” around who needed it as soon as possible. The woman came and immediately signed up for 12 months and put her deposit. As the estate agent and this woman poked around the house, I was hit with the reality that this really is not our home. It belongs to someone else and they have every right to poke around. I felt judged and guilty as I knew the carpets were in a state. I’m terrible with keeping carpets clean and I suddenly felt like some irresponsible student. After they left I felt so low, almost like I was about to be evicted. We knew we’d be cutting it close with the current house we were buying so this of course leaves no time find another house to buy. It looks like we will need to rent again. We spent yesterday looking at other houses, just trying to get some more options, but I found it was so hard. I had started to visualize our family in a certain house, and the other houses we looked at seemed a million miles away from that ideal. I then started to feel guilty that I was being too picky and needed to just accept the reality that the other house was unique and we’re simply not going to find anything else like that in our price range.

Whatever…I suppose it’s hard because I had a taste of this period of unsettledness coming to an end…of being able to finally start settling down….and it seems not to be. Of course everyone keeps telling me “there will be something so much better” and all that…but in the mean time, I just feel pretty stupid. We dared to take this step…and now we just have egg on our face…facing eviction at the end of the month with no where to go. So Monday morning will have me on the phone to various estate agents trying to find a place to rent, and I’m sure we’ll find something and we will get through this…but it feels really rubbish right now. We’ve prayed every step of the way and it’s hard when you really thought you heard God’s voice in it all.

Boo