cjusa.org

Where we love is home,
Home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.
~Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr

Today marks exactly one year since we closed on our first home.

I can’t believe it’s been a whole year!!!!

I’ve mentioned before that this house was soooo a “God thing”, so I figured what better time to tell the story than now

We have lived a lot of places….like A LOT!!!

After we got married and moved to NC, we found ourselves struggling… CR was working two jobs, in an effort to allow me to be home to raise our daughter. While all our other friends were building homes or buying homes, we were doing this…

living with my parents
rented a townhouse in bad area
moved back in with parents
pregnant with Shelby
moved into a “2″ bedroom apartment (smelled like smoke, found out previous tenant died there, had great neighbors though!)
moved back in with parents while new rental was finished
moved to horse farm and rented ( I loved it there, CR….not so much

During all those moves, we kept praying and trying to buy a house. But God just kept shutting every door. No matter how hard I tried to pry them open, he would just slam them shut.

Well in the fall of 2010 I began praying about growing our family. We knew me getting pregnant was out of the picture, so I began to talk with CR about adoption or foster care. He was always open to it, but kept telling me that we couldn’t do anything until we owned our own home. This was so important to him, and even though I wasn’t as convinced, I went along with it.
Nothing really happened after that for a few months. We both knew we weren’t financially ready to buy, so we were working on that.
We were, however, aware of what was for sale in our desired area etc.
There was one house in my parent’s neighborhood that we saw went into foreclosure. We knew even in foreclosure we couldn’t afford to buy in their neighborhood. But as the months went on, we started noticing that they were dropping the price in $10,000 increments. Then on New Years Eve, I just happened to look at our local real estate page and saw that the price had dropped C-R-A-Z-Y low, like $40,000 less than what it started at!
We figured it was a long shot, but we should at least call and talk to them. We were put in touch with a Realtor named Suzi, and she was so amazingly sweet! I kept asking her why the house hadn’t sold yet? was it in bad shape? Some crazy foundation issue? She had no explanation. We arranged to see it that weekend, and when we did, we fell in love! The major reason it hadn’t sold was the garage, which had been finished in for an extra family space for the previous owner. But it made a perfect studio for me!!!

I won’t lie, I did a lot of begging… I kept trying to convince God that this house was so perfect for us, and would he pretty please with sugar on top, let us buy it

To our shock, we qualified.

We made an offer. Scariest thing ever!!!

They countered.

We countered.

They gave us their rock bottom, which happened to be what we wanted to pay

Without going into too much personal detail here, you should know we stole the house.
Not literally.
But essentially we did.
We paid over $100,000 less than what it had sold for previously, and about $150,000 less than what it was worth when the market was better. (We are praying the market goes back up again too!)
Our house is very similar to my parent’s just down the road, and we paid less than they did 10 years ago, sorry Dad.

We were stunned. We prayed that everything would come together just as it needed to, and boy did it ever.

We closed on February 11th.

And we got our first house warming present! Our AC broke, that same day, to the tune of $500. Welcome to home ownership Braniff family!

Now, the house it’self is 3 floors… 5 bedrooms, 3 baths, and over 3,000 sq/ft. Our lot is almost a full acre with tons of great space for kiddos to play. Why on earth would God provide us a house this large when it’s just the four of us?

You may have guessed, but I believe we are to fill it with His precious children. And I may have waited all of 2 hours after we closed to remind my darling husband what he said about growing our family We did let the dust settle for a few months before we started the adoption process, and now as you know, we are waiting on our referral.

Every time I pull into our driveway, I am reminded of God’s faithfulness. It wasn’t easy waiting on His timing, but if we had bought when we wanted, we would have been caught right inside the real estate bubble and be upside down in a home. And we wouldn’t be living less than a mile from my parents, have a perfect home studio, and a home large enough to grow our family.
Our home isn’t perfect, it was built in the late 80′s, so most things are outdated. We don’t have a fancy kitchen or master bath, but we have the space we need, and it’s absolutely perfect for our family!

His plans are always so much better than our own

Source: http://thebranifffamily.blogspot.com/2012/02/our-home.html

ener1 vanna white national chocolate cake day pat sajak joe paterno memorial service taco bell breakfast menu gop debate