When selling your home causes emotional breakdowns.

So, it's no secret that we've had our house on the market for quite awhile now.  We've switched realtors, we've shared, posted, prayed, and did everything in our power to make it pretty for a lucky family to come along and love it as much as we do.

On Thursday we discovered that we had a total of THREE showings on our home--two that very day and one on Tuesday.  Chris went over that morning and quickly mowed and made sure everything was squared away.  We were beyond thrilled and waited with anticipation to hear the results.  I had literally close to 100 folks praying with us about our situation, and I had such a good feeling about how things were going.  Finally, finally, finally we were getting somewhere!

When we heard back from the Thursday showings, both clients were leaning towards homes on the other side of town.  There is nothing we can do about that, so we put a lot of effort into preparing our home for Tuesday.  We spent all day Saturday at the house this past weekend doing our very best to get it ready for the showing.  Our house is shiny and pretty and hot tub-free.  Our shrubs and trees have been trimmed, our lawn has been mowed, and our driveway has been edged.  Our deck has been painted and the leaves have been raked (well, before all of the rain and wind came this past weekend).  Someone even randomly stopped by wanting to see the house because they were renting one street over and have been looking to buy a home in our neighborhood.  We left our home feeling so good about things and knowing that it was ready for Tuesday's showing.

And then today, around lunchtime, our Tuesday appointment was cancelled.  

To say that I am disappointed would be an understatement.

I know that other people are dealing with pretty serious issues.  We had a student who lost a sibling, folks with cancer, people dealing with absent spouses, and on and on and on.  While our situation is not nearly as a big of a deal as a terminal illness, it has been weighing on us for this past year.  And making monthly mortgage payments for a home you aren't living in gets a little old after awhile.  It is an emotional roller coaster and I have been on extreme highs and lows these past few days.  I try to not let it get to me, but it really gets me down that things are not moving quicker.

We have seen the Lord use our house to help some friends of ours just in the nick of time. Our home has been available when others needed a temporary fix and we have enjoyed having people in our home.  It was a nice situation--a place for them and someone helping with our mortgage.  

But if I'm honest with myself, I'm still wondering when the Lord will choose for it to be our turn to reap the benefits from the house.  It almost feels silly to write it and say it out loud, but I can't help but wonder at times why it is taking so long for our house to sell.  We've been able to make sense of it all when people were in our home. 

But, now that we are not renting the home, I'm left wondering what's coming next.  

I have been pretty transparent with the Lord recently.  He has heard all of my questions and my concerns.  He knows my heart and He knows that I want nothing more than to close this chapter of our lives.  I have this romanticized notion that we will receive an offer this Wednesday because it was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving nine years ago when we closed on the house.  It would be a nice storybook ending, but I'm not going to get my hopes up.  

However, even through all of this, I know that He is good.  And I know that His will is good.  And I know that there is a reason for all of this, and I might not ever know what the reasoning is (and that is tough for me to swallow).  I have come to terms with it and I do trust Him.  

But I won't be sad if He decides to let the right buyer come along any minute now.