Learning from loss

Last February I began to fantasize about the day I would be able to post pictures of our family frolicking on our newly purchased property. I began to dream of a life on 22 acres of rolling hills with 900 ft of river frontage.   Letting go of it was much harder than I ever imagined.  

Even though we committed every step to the Lord along the way, I  still found myself grieving the loss of that dream. 

It all began one day when Nathaniel came home from work and he said something along the lines of "I feel ready for a change", lets start looking at acreages". I immediately jumped at the idea and started doing some research. A week or two later Nate half jokingly sent a listing for acreage to my parents that said " hey look what we could get if we were to pool our resources". Surprisingly, they jumped at the idea and two weeks later they came over to the island to look at a few acreages in Coombs with us. The next day my dad spotted a property in Port Alberni and decided to check it out. They encouraged us to do the same when we had a chance. It was pretty much love at first sight.

After a great deal of prayer and number crunching we submitted an offer through a  realtor friend. We never heard back from the seller. A couple months later I noticed that her listing had been removed from mls. I called her to ask if she had decided not to sell. She said that she was willing to sell to us but wanted a higher offer. After a couple weeks of negotiating via email  we agreed to a purchase price. We submitted another offer. No response. She said that she couldn't sell her property until she had found something to replace it, as she had horses to care for, so we waited a couple more months while she searched for properties. Eventually she found a property she liked. We all breathed a huge sigh of relief only to discover that we would have to wait another month to remove subjects. A couple days before my parents moved a shipping container to the property, as she had previously give us permission to do so, she suddenly changed her mind and decided that she no longer wanted to sell. 

We were devastated.

Needless to say, there were tears, frustration, bewilderment and sorrow. Thankfully, I  learned a great deal from the experience; namely how to wait,  handle disappointment and  grieve. I can look at these photos without a lump in my throat.

We still long to have acreage, but we are content to wait patiently for the right time and place. We continue to look at properties and trust the Lord to lead us when the time is right.