A Moving Story

"Caleb where is the "For Sale" sign?" I yelled to my ten year old boy who let me know multiple times how much he didn't want to move. The "Sign" making a ten minute debut disappeared as quickly as it went up.

"I TOOK IT DOWN BECAUSE WE'RE NOT MOVING!" Caleb unabashedly confessed.

"WELL, GET OUT THERE AND PUT IT BACK IN THE GROUND. IT'S NOT YOUR PROPERTY, " I retorted knowing darn well he could care less it wasn't his property.

Out he slumped and stomped. I expected him to storm back through the door within a minute, carrying on about his fierce resentment toward me for making him move. Minutes went by and he still hadn't come in. I peered out the front window to see what was taking him. There he was straining to shove the poles back into the dry yard along with help from the red-headed, assertive six year old neighbor girl, Kamrynn. (I know that's how you spell her name because she spelled it on my driveway with yellow chalk in large letters a couple weeks earlier when she moved in.)

"We can't get it in and I don't think you should move," Kamrynn informed me.

I stepped outside to tell them I'd handle it. Caleb ran in the house and Kamrynn trotted home. I walked back inside after I had rectified things.

"EVEN KAMRYNN DOESN'T WANT ME TO MOVE!" said Caleb.

"You mean the Kamrynn you're always hiding from?" I shot back.

Moving had been off and on our minds over the past decade. Owning a little property had been a dream at one time but the dream morphed into providing a place for Alisha's care to make it easier on us as we age

Only two days earlier it seemed as though God moved mountains for us to put an offer on an in-process construction home in Brighton. We had seen this house a week before without much consideration because it clearly sat out of our price range but what allured us was its floor plan, it was the only house we'd ever seen with a first-floor master bedroom and a second-floor master bedroom. Jeff and I thought it would be the ideal home if it were only in our price range. After looking at about twenty-five houses which all needed enormous work, we spoke to our realtor fairly discouraged. We asked him if he could contact some builders. It seemed reasonable to have a conversation about building. After looking into construction loans, the idea quickly lost steam. Construction loans have a higher interest rate and require a significant amount of money be put down. Our realtor had found a builder who said he'd like to talk to us, the realtor who was building the house with two master bedrooms. Unexpectedly and unplanned on our part, this builder came out of nowhere to ask us to put a small amount of money down while he continues to finance the construction project. We told him the cost of the house was out of our price range. He dropped the price to our price range and offered to make over five grand of modifications for Alisha's wheelchair needs. All of this promise, smack in the center of the spot Jeff and I prayed we could live, if it worked out for us to one day move.

We told the builder we accept this generous offer and then I did something I thought later sort of strange.

"We will have no problem selling our house. I have complete confidence it will sell immediately," I boasted.

Jeff said the builder smiled at me. I hadn't noticed.

We drove home that night in a dreamy daze considering a brand new house. Once home, Jeff and I said maybe we should find out about the neighbors since this was such a big decision. Jeff drove back that evening to talk to them.

"The neighbors next door have a boy Caleb's age and they said there's four more little boys across the street. They love the neighborhood and were really friendly," Jeff and I both breathed a sigh of relief.

Even though we had told the kids about this "idea" a few months earlier, they were surprised how quickly it was happening.

Caleb, transparent child, wasted no time in revealing his heart, yelling and crying that he wouldn't be moving. This was a major change in our lives. We've lived in this house seventeen years. This is the house we lived in with our son Kodey. This is the house where Caleb was born. Many good memories and many heartbreaking ones were born in this house. It is hard for all of us. I accepted his anger as part of the process of acceptance but yanking the sign out of the ground yanked me right out of an understanding-mode.

I tried to tell him he will have some new kids to play with, having five boys in arms reach.

He told me, "That just makes it harder for me because I won't know who to play with."

No, I was not going to be able to help him to accept this. It would take an act of God.

The following day after the sign went up, went down, and back up, Caleb headed up north with his cousins, dad, grandpa, and uncle for a guys camping weekend. No sooner had they left my phone began ringing with interest to see our newly listed house. I didn't want say no to anyone, causing the girls and me to depart the house with little notice. Five showings on Friday and five on Saturday, we were in a whirlwind.

By 1:00 p.m. on Saturday our realtor called to say we had three serious offers and we were stopping showings. He arrived at my house around 4:30 to go over the offers. Every offer came in well over our asking price. It was an unbelievable bidding war. We accepted the surest offer. Our house had sold in one day. Blurry blitz.

On Monday, the boys returned. Caleb walked in the door saying, I braced myself for the battle about moving to continue.

"I heard the house sold," he said.

I nodded. He'd changed. His voice stayed calm and accepting. He chatted non-stop for about a half hour of all the fun he'd had with his cousins. His cousin, Nathan, jumped up and down when he heard his cousin Caleb would be going to the same school with him. Nathan, unprovoked nor bribed by me, talked up the new school and his excitement to have Caleb nearby. His stellar salesmanship sold Caleb on the Move.

Caleb says he still feels sad, as do I, about our move but he is also working on receiving this incredible gift.

Isn't that the way unexpected, unplanned gifts work? They show up and we can either accept them or work against them. Gifts are hard to receive when we refuse to allow God to be in control. Once we open our hands to hold the gift, God helps us to embrace it, to work with it, and eventually fully accept its goodness.

Eager to see what God has in store...