A New Home - Different Dreams

If you go back through my old postings here, you will see that I had always dreamed of a homestead - acreage and a farmhouse way out in the middle of nowhere. That didn't happen, and for the longest time, I couldn't understand why. I believed with everything I had that God was leading us in that direction, but it appears after all these years, I was mistaken. Maybe it was my own focus that I was listening to and not God's.

You see, back in December of 2011, hubby lost his job and we were excited because now we had no excuses to not look for that dream homestead. He applied to more jobs that one could imagine, but with no luck. Just as his unemployment was to run out, a contract job was offered to him - and to a place he never ever thought he'd ever have a chance of working at - his old Alma Matter! He took the contract and was hired permanently!! That was so exciting until we started looking for that dream place that we found out would never be a reality.

I was heartbroken for a while - goodbye dreams... But God kept nudging me and letting me know there was something he had planned, and I started to listen. When you truly listen, God does give you something that will make you happy, but you need to hear with an open heart. That was difficult in the beginning when house hunting. We went to an area that was much higher in housing costs than we were used to, so I wanted as much from the house as we could afford, and got caught up in the glitz of gorgeous homes.

After a while, the houses started to all look the same. Many were, as they were the cookie-cutter type in a development all on no more than 1/3rd of an acre. I wasn't satisfied with those either. Our realtor had shown us a very small house in a small town just a few miles away from hubby's job, but I stuck my nose up at it. It wasn't anything like I wanted. We went on looking for quite awhile. Funny thing is, guess which house is the one we bought :)

Every day I find hidden treasures - things I didn't notice before... and every day I am coming to love this home more and more.

Homestead Dreams

We have dreamed about buying lots of land and becoming self-sufficient since before we were married many many moons ago. Every time our income went up so we could almost afford land, so did the land prices. We decided to keep going and honing our skills here, until we go move on to our dream place. So far, the dream place is still a dream, but we are doing pretty well here on just 7 tenths of an acre.

With the economy not looking very promising, we've decided to stop looking for now and just be thankful that we are out of debt and everything is paid for - our home, our cars, our credit cards... everything. If the economy spirals down like they claim it will, I know we will be better off than some of our friends and family members. I'm thankful we didn't listen to all the times they told us to just take a chance and go deep into debt. I think the best thing I've heard from them is, "You can only live once". Well, now they are panicking for "living once", and we are saying "phew!" knowing where we could be standing now.

This blog is for our explorations and trials - our successes and failures...And how we are doing it all here, in the middle of town, on 7/10ths of an acre.