Buying our first HOME!

Within two weeks our world changed dramatically.

We found out we were pregnant. And we found our dream house & bought it!

C R A Z Y.

But there was a whole lot that went into that 2 week period coming to fruition, a lot of behind the scenes preperation, prayer and diligence. That’s the funny thing in life, sometimes it seems like all of a sudden, poof everything happens, but if you reflect, you’ll see you’ve most likely been taking steps of investment towards that reality for a much longer period of time.

What “steps of investment” are you taking today that will get you to your poof* everything’s happening moment in the future? Food for thought!

Anywho. I want to share some really neat things that happened along the journey of purchasing our first home.

For about a year now we’ve spent each morning looking at our online portal that feeds us houses within the criteria we’re looking for over coffee. We’d look through the photos, imagine potentially living there, weight the pros and cons, and nothing really was ticking all of the boxes. Until the day after we announced we were pregnant.

Josh was the one who saw the listing come through first. And he said, “this is it, this is our house.”

I remember quickly running to open the portal on my computer so I could catch up the picture viewings and see what he was talking about… wow, that could be our house.

We’ve been living in a really beautiful but small loft downtown Kitchener since we got married, thankfully Josh had purchased it a few years ago so it was a great home for the start of our life together. But with a baby coming, and vision to grow our family & host community more… we needed a little more space.

We booked a viewing with our realtor for that evening! Well, before we knew it we had an offer on the table. Then, we waited.

The waiting is the hardest part. Wondering did we offer the right amount? Will someone else put in an offer? Will they just reject everything? Did we just buy a house?

Then the phone call came. Our realtor called us, we put her on speaker knowing she’d be carrying some news, and we could tell by the tone of her voice right away, we had a house! We high fived full of smiles and almost that bit of wondered disbelief, wow.

But the really cool things hadn’t even happened yet. The best part about this whole experience was seeing how involved God is in our day to day comings and goings, investments and decisions. When we invite Him to be of course. God takes buying a house and makes it way more than a house, but a monumental life moment where impact and connection is going to, and continue to, take place. God weaves beautiful life narratives and moments together in ways we just can’t conjure up ourselves. Here’s a few examples of what I mean…

1) We got a message from the SELLERS saying that they wanted to have us in when they open their pool to show us the ropes, and tour us around their home that they’ve lived in their whole married lives, and the wife grew up their her ENTIRE life as her parents built the home. They expressed how happy they were that another growing family was going to start making more memories in their cherished home.

2) The week prior to this purchase, I had participated in a local giveaway on Instagram that ended up giving my instagram account quite an amount of new followers. (What does this have to fo with our house?Just stick with me…) THREE of these new followers lives within 4 houses of our new house. They reached out to me when we posted the picture and said along the lines, “Hey! I recently followed you and recognized the house you posted, we’re your neighbours!”…. WOW. We could hardly believe it, we hadn’t just bought a house, but there’s a much bigger story being written here. These couples went on to share how they were young families as well, and were looking forward to meeting us.

How cool is that.

But it all goes to show, that when we engage with God in our lives, what one could see as a financial transaction, turns into a life breathing moment where connections are being made, relationships are being formed, impact is being made, and love & life is all around.

I can’t wait to continue to see what God’s got in store!

XOXO

Ash