When God Says No

Just over a year ago, God said no to our dream. Early fall of 2016, Ben showed me a home on Zillow. At first I thought “there’s no way…” But the more Ben and I looked at it, the more we started to dream. It was the living room that spoke to me first; so many windows and natural light, and a fireplace. Actually, there were three fireplaces in the house! It was my dream house! Cape cod/ranch style brick house, with spacious hallways, the potential for same floor laundry, bedrooms all on the same level, eat in kitchen with fireplace, master bedroom bath, I could go on and on. The layout of the house just made me feel so comfortable and happy! The house was in need of much love but it was spacious, full of character, authentic, beautiful. It even had dutch doors!

The property also ticked off so many of my boxes. It had a tree lined drive, it was 10 acres (I’ve wanted land for basically my entire life), it even had a second house. I’ve joked with my parents that when they are old, I wanted to build them a “hut” to live in, in our backyard. This was an actual house they could live in when the time came. But the icing on the cake for this property was the barn. It was old and beautiful. We decided to see it… just for fun of course.

Old Limestone Barn with Vaulted Ceiling. Surrounded by lovely shade trees. Perfect for a wedding or party.

When we got there, I tried to hide my excitement. I just loved it! And that’s what I kept whispering to my mom and Ben as we explored the place. I had vision for it. But it needed so much work and the sellers were selling it as is so all the stuff (there was a lot!!!) and problems would be ours if we purchased it.

We decided to see it again. This time with my dad too. He’d have a pretty good idea of the amount of work it would take to make this dream a reality. Ben and I worked the numbers over and over and made an offer, a very low offer, pretty much expecting that it would be rejected. But they countered but only came down 25 thousand (like I said, we made a really low offer). We went back to the drawing board and reworked the numbers again. Yes, we could afford more so we countered. This was the beginning to a very long, drawn out, negotiation processes that gave us moments of joy followed by heart break. The entire negotiation processes was about 2 months long… 2 very long emotionally exhausting months. But this place was our dream… Over the course of this process, I daydreamed about this place being our home so often it almost felt like it was.

We prayed that God would make it clear to us what we should do. And he did. He closed the door when the sellers accepted another offer right before Christmas. A business offer, that was supposedly going to end up putting a gas station on the property. What!?

We cried (actually Ben’s not a crier but if he was, he would have cried with me). We tried to move on and we did.

Then about a month later we got a call from our real estate agent that the offer fell through and we were to come back with our very best offer by the end of the week. Was this really happening? But God had done something in our hearts. He had led us down a different path. I was now pregnant and the amount of work needed on this home to make it livable was just too much for this season of life we were now in. We knew we couldn’t offer what our best had been before. We were also so done with the emotional rollercoaster the sellers had already led us on, so we made a low offer, not as low as our first but low… And as expected, they went with a different offer.

It’s funny, I thought I had moved on from this place. But every time I think about it, it makes my heart hurt so bad. This place was my dream. We have kept our eyes open for something else as the entire process has made Ben and I realize we do want land. But so far nothing has spoken to us and believe me, I’m not moving unless it does, which at this point feels like it will be never.

This past fall we did write a letter to the current owners just letting them know if they ever want to sell, we are interested. We dropped it off in person and ended up talking to the parents of the couple that purchased it. They were there helping paint the second house. The mom told me, they loved the place and were never going to move. I’m glad a couple bought it and not a business that wouldn’t have appreciated the beauty.

It’s hard to imagine why God would take us on that journey only to end in a no. There have been times where I wished he hadn’t. Heart break hurts! He obviously has something different and better even if we can’t see it and struggle to believe it. We need to trust his perfect plan for our lives and ask that He lead us, because He sees all and we don’t. This is where I continually need to remind myself to let God be God.

Old limestone barn with red roof and old barn doors. Blond toddler girl standing in front.