We're looking...

About a week after I wrote my post entitled, "We're not looking," circumstances suddenly changed, and we got the go ahead to start looking. God has a sense of humor.

During the past several months, my feelings about this have fluctuated up and down. Some days I am totally in love with my little house. I think it's the most awesome place in the world, and I adore the view from my back porch, and I can't imagine packing up everything and moving again. I love the location of this house, since it is close to so many wonderful things, like pools, parks, and the library. It also isn't more than 20 minutes from David's office, and with the price of gas the way it is, that is awfully important.

Other days, I think that living with the inconsiderate neighbors and the drug dealers down the street and the abandoned house around the corner isn't such a good thing. I realize that this house is just a little small for homeschooling, since we have no extra room to use for a schoolroom, even if we piled all three kids I pray to have in one bedroom. This probably isn't the best place for us long term, even though its wonderful in the short term. I worry that interest rates will only go up, so we should get cracking. The market is good for someone who doesn't have anything to sell and wants to buy. And, God provided for the timing here, so that must mean that we're supposed to start looking... right?

But now that the time has come... I'm scared. I worry about all the unknowns. I turn into Chicken Little and worry that the sky is falling. What if we look, and we find something, and we buy it, and we budget wrong, and its more than we can afford? And if that happened, what if that means David has to change jobs, and I have to get a part time job at Burger King because we can't get out of a mortgage like we can a lease? And then of course the house will have toxic mold that the home inspector didn't find. And the furnace will go out the first year we're in the house. And all our savings will be eaten up fixing the termite problem that we'll be sure to have. =)

I've seen too many things go iffy on friends and family who bought houses. And all of a sudden, I've become newly thankful for renting. If there's a problem, it's the management company's problem and the owner's problem. If the problems get too big, we can walk away. You can't/shouldn't walk away from your own house. Even if its a big mistake. A big costly mistake.

At this moment, I know at least two stay-at-home moms who are thinking of getting part time jobs because they just bought houses, and they're not able to meet their expenses each month like they thought they could. This is sobering. My job security here with Seth means the world to me. I am afraid of compromising it by making a bad decision we can't get out of because we figured wrong.

I know it's not as bad as all that. I'm just spewing all my fears that I have in my worst moments. We are both pretty conservative in our budgeting and planning, and David is extremely good with numbers. My dad was a banker, and he knows many of the ins and outs of mortgages. God has blessed us with a good down payment. David has a very secure job. The housing market here is such than we can afford a nice house in a good part of town near David's office. We have been so incredibly blessed. I just need to put aside all my fears and allow God to give us this blessing without being paralyzed by worry about the unknown.

We have gotten a referral on a good real estate agent. He's even a deacon at our church. Tomorrow, we'll be taking our maiden house hunting voyage with him. We'll see four houses at 10:00 a.m. It's exciting, and it's scary, all at the same time. We have plenty of time to look. The owner of this house has told us we can go month to month indefinitely after our lease is up in July, at the same rent, so we have all the time in the world.

How are we supposed to know if we find the right thing? Do you just have the feeling that this is your house? I've been told you do. I wonder... I hope it'll be super clear. I just want to do the right thing. At the right price. In the right place. Arrghhh! =) I'll let ya know how it goes...