This just in...

I'm taking a break from packing to fill those of you in who haven't heard yet. We're moving! This weekend! No, we did not plan it this way but were unfortunately forced into it. For the last couple of years, we've been renting our house with the intention of saving up and building in the next year or so. Circumstances (including my medical bills and the poor economy) have kept us from being able to proceed in the time that we had hoped to, but we were willing to be patient and stick it out in our current home.

A month or so ago, our landlord decided to put our house up for sale but promised to honor our lease which is not up until June of next year. With the news of the baby (which is due June 3rd) and the possibility of being booted out of our house, we began to consider our options. We knew we couldn't afford to build the house we wanted right now, so we thought about buying this house when our lease would end. Our landlord knew that we were considering this and said he would give us first dibs. As a precautionary move, we began casually looking at other homes (both sale and rent). We found a few that we were interested in, but we weren't going to consider a move this close to the holidays.

As it turns out, we're not in control of our lives, and God had other plans for us. =) We had been praying over the weekend that if our decision to wait until the new year was not what God wanted that He would show us in a very definite way what we should do. Yesterday morning, our landlord called Jason and informed him that he had let the home go into foreclosure and that it was currently in short sale. He asked that we move out by Dec. 1st. Well! If that's not a sign, I don't know what is! =)

So, yesterday afternoon, we looked at 3 rental homes that we had found and chose one of them. We let the realtor know that the monthly cost was a little higher than we wanted to pay, so she called the homeowner and he knocked off $125 to put us right where we wanted to be. So, we will now be saving $225 per month, and we will be gaining 600 square feet of living area! Sweet! God is good! We may not understand His timing right now, but we can trust that He is in control and that this did not surprise Him.

Our plans before all of this happened were to spend the week of Thanksgiving at my parents' house, and we would still like to do that. That is why we have chosen to move this weekend. Please pray for us that we will be able to get everything packed and moved by this weekend and that everything will go smoothly and relatively stress-free. =}