The work God does in our hearts while we wait....

  

  We left Kansas City on Wednesday morning, July 28th to travel to Panama City for the planned closing on our home in Florida that was set to take place on July 29th. We were told by the builder of our home that if we could not close on the 29th our contract would be cancelled and thrown out. Due to this sense of urgency we decided to leave Kansas City and trust that the one last "tiny" detail in our loan process would come through as promised in time for our closing. The "tiny detail" that we were still waiting on was that our appraisal had been completed, but the report had not been turned in yet. Our lender said the appraiser had sent an e-mail stating that he would turn in the report on Wednesday afternoon, and no one had any reason to believe that a professional in this industry would not keep his word. In order for us to make it to our closing all the way across the country on time (remember...we were being told by the builder that our contract would be thrown out if we couldn't be at the closing on the 29th) we had to leave Kansas City by 6:00 am on Wednesday morning with our 2 26' UHaul trucks, the kids, the dogs, the bird, and our family car and start driving across the country while we waited for this dang appraisal report to come in. 

Up to this point the entire loan process had gone smoothly. We had flown through underwriting back in June in less than 2 days (that's unheard of). Everything on our end was solid and ready to go. The only issue we had run into was that our lender had trouble finding an appraiser that could complete an appraisal by our closing date on the 29th. Apparently appraisals in this particular area are taking 6-8 weeks to complete!! Finally, on July 13th we received the good news that our lender had found an appraiser that said he could turn an appraisal in 14 days for us. This appraiser charged several hundred dollars more than other appraisers in the area, but our lender agreed to pay the extra amount in exchange for an appraisal report in time for our closing. This is where the nightmare begins....

We were told Wednesday evening while we were still on the road traveling that the appraisal report had not been turned in as promised. At that point we decided to stop in Alabama for a few hours of restless sleep & hit the road again early Thursday morning to keep forging onward towards Panama City in the hopes the report would show up that morning in time for our 2:00 pm closing. After a long day and night of traveling across the country with our entire existence packed into moving trucks, we arrived at our home the morning of July 29th to complete the final walkthrough. We were supposed to leave the house after doing the final walk-through and head to the title company to close, but that did not happen. Instead, our real estate agent said the builder's sales agent said the builder would give us one more day to get the report. So, we headed into the city to find a place to stay for the night. This is where the nightmare continues.....

Here we were, in the middle of a tourist city, no hotel reservations, smack in the middle of the busiest vacation time of the year! 😟 To complicate matters even more, we had 2 dogs and a bird with us! Do you have any idea how impossible it is to find same day lodging for 5 people, 2 dogs, and a bird....with a parking lot that can accommodate 2 26 foot long UHaul trucks? Well, we found a place...and it came with quite the price tag!! We didn't have any options, and we were tired and hungry, so we payed the exorbitant price and settled in for the night. 

Friday morning rolled around and we were hopeful we would finally hear good news of an appraisal report that was turned in....we waited....and we waited....and nothing happened. Defeated, we found ourselves in a leasing office begging them to take pity on us a fast-track a way for us to rent a 4 bedroom home for the next 12 months. We were told that the builder would not be extending our contract past this day, and we believed that was the end of it. This SHOULD HAVE been the end of the insanity, but it was not. We placed a call to our real estate agent to ask if the builder had indeed cancelled our contract because we had not heard a word from the builders agent all day & it was already 3:30 pm. At this point it was important that the builder was the one to cancel the contract because that was our guaranteed pathway to get our large earnest money deposit back.  5 min later our real estate agent called us back and said: "The builder would like to wait until Monday or Tuesday now to see if the appraisal comes in". At this point we had mixed feelings about waiting, but we felt like we were sort of being forced into that position. So....we waited.

The rest of the waiting story is a bit of a blur. We couldn't find a single hotel room in town Saturday night, so we had to drive 50 miles north to find a sketchy Motel 8 that had 2 available rooms that would allow pets. That ended up being a nightmare that we lost more money on because we had those rooms booked for 3 nights (non-refundable) and we ended up sleeping in our clothes and getting up at 6:00 am Sunday morning to GET THE HECK OUTTA THERE! Sunday morning we drove straight to the beach to let the dogs and kids put their feet in the sand. We were tired and broken at this point and we had no idea where we were going to stay that night. I was starting to lose hope that we were making the right choice, and I finally broke down in the car while I was sitting all alone and cried for a good long time.  Jon had enough strength and composure left at this point to continue searching on-line for pet-friendly hotels. Finally, he found one was in Lynn Haven (close to Panama City!) & they had availability. This was our 5th hotel change in this long saga & everyone was starting to fall apart at the seams.  

I'll try to summarize the rest of the boring details at this point. Basically, starting on Monday morning we would wake up, wait to hear from our lender, who was waiting on this appraiser to turn in his report. Every day we would wait while the Appraisal Management Company would send out an URGENT request to this appraiser letting him know that a family of 5 was sitting in a hotel room with their pets and all of their earthly belongings packed in trucks...and every day he did not respond. Tuesday....no response. Wednesday morning...no response (we start to wonder if he is dead due to his lack of response). By the way, the builder that said they wouldn't wait one SECOND past 5 pm on Friday....yeah....they lied! They continued to say they would wait (that would have been nice to know BEFORE we left Kansas City!!!!). Meanwhile we were averaging $1000/day on hotels/food and UHaul overages. Everyday was a literal repeating nightmare. 

Finally, late on Wednesday afternoon we had a glimmer of hope. It was a week late...but we find out this appraiser isn't dead, and he actually turned in a report! BUT....his report is full of errors and it gets sent back!!! NO!!!!!!! This was excruciating! Thursday morning our lender called us & said the report was fixed, and the value.....................came in $14,400 under contract value. We put our heads together and decided to offer $8,400 over the appraisal value and ask that the builder offset some of that by helping with closing costs. It was a solid offer that still allowed the builder to sell the house above the appraised value. The builder responded in 15 minutes by sending us a cancellation of our contract! What?????? What just happened? There was ZERO negotiation. Our realtor was surprised (but not shocked because she said this is how this builder typically acts). Our lender WAS shocked! She had never heard of something like this. There was zero negotiation involved, and I think everyone had the wind knocked out of them at this point. There was no time to cry or feel sorry for ourselves at this point because we were about to be truly and completely homeless. The hotel that we had been staying in could not accommodate us beyond Thursday night, so we had to figure something out...and QUICK!

We dropped everything and RAN to the leasing office we were at on Friday to beg for their LAST available rental. They did not have the larger unit we had hoped for, but they did have a small 4 bedroom home available on Friday. We had to rush to set up the utilities in our name, get a renters policy, and call UHaul to let them know it would still be another day or two before we could return the trucks (they were not happy)!! The rent is CRAZY high...but it was literally our only option (we had been looking all week and coming up short). Rentals in this area are in high demand and severely lacking because they experienced a massive hurricane 3 years ago. When Covid hit it seized all the rebuilding work that was being done & the rental market became the hottest commodity in the area. Couple that with the fact that this area is minutes from a military base, and you have a recipe for scarce rent pickings. Our realtor could not believe we found something...neither could we!  

Now that I have outlined our whole dramatic/traumatic housing story, can I tell you a different story? I titled this post "The work that God does in our hearts while we wait" for a reason. The whole time we were facing day, after day, after day of what felt like a never-ending bad dream, God was working in our hearts in a really important way. Both Jon and I felt like God was in control of our housing situation & I believe that is what allowed us to surrender any of our pre-conceived ideas of what the end result needed to be. We could have continued to pursue that house & decided to just pay the full contract amount when the appraisal came in low, but we both decided that was not a decision we had peace about. All of the obstacles that had been thrown at us seemed to be strengthening our resolve to listen to our intuition and walk away from that house. This was the first time that I began to fully understand that sometimes the work that God does in our hearts while we wait....is more important that what we are waiting for.  While I was waiting on answers from a man with an overdue appraisal report, God was working in my heart to prepare me for HIS plans. 

When we set out on this crazy journey to upend our entire existence and break out of the mold we had been living in our entire lives, we were not entirely naïve to the fact there would be some challenges. We were not making this move 1,000 miles away from our friends and family for a house! Our goal with this move was much bigger than a silly house, and I wasn't about to let a failed real estate transaction define me! For the first time in our lives we had decided to STOP trying to do what everyone else does because up to this point in our lives that has never worked well for us. We had spent the first 21 years of our marriage trying to follow "a formula" that we saw everyone else living, and we thought that formula would yield successful results for us...but it didn't. We were not thriving. We were not at peace. Our children were not experiencing a full and happy childhood. We had a nice home, decent jobs, steady income, and we were living the "suburban dream"...but we didn't have peace with where we were at. When Jon and I would talk about our future we were not excited. We knew something needed to change, but we did not know where to start. Do we start with our careers? Do we change our lifestyle? Do we need to move? How do we focus more on the kids? Those were all of the questions we were asking each other, and then.....the Covid lockdowns started!

I suppose 18 months ago the work that started in our hearts during a time of so many unknowns is what allowed us to face this unknown in Florida and still have confidence that we are going to be ok. I cannot guarantee that our path here in Florida will be full of successes. In fact, my thinking now has shifted to the knowledge that life is full of more failures than successes. It's what we do with those failures and how we respond to them that defines our futures. We cannot live our lives in fear and expect a fulfilling life to follow. I cannot go to scripture and find a single place where God calls his people to live in fear...and then says "you will be blessed for your fear of the unknown". Nope! He calls us to step out in boldness, with the knowledge that the plans He has for us are GOOD...to prosper us and not to harm us...to give us HOPE and a future (Jer 29:11)! More than anything right now I want to teach my children that taking risks are how you move yourself forward. Stepping out into the unknown, while scary, can still be worth it! I want them to see me struggle, fail, and then finally succeed. I'm not afraid to fail anymore. I know that life is full of unknowns, so why not face the unknown with a new perspective that the things that God is working out in the unknown are going to be beautifully woven into the story He is creating for us that is full of GOOD things!