The Beverly’s are in! We finally closed on our new house and moved in on Saturday. To some, it may not be a big deal but to us, it is huge. It is the first house that we have ever lived in that is ours and we are over the top excited.

In August, we were not even thinking about purchasing a house. It had not even crossed our minds. A dear friend of ours for many years, Amy Patterson, who is a Realtor/Broker and the Team Leader at Keller Williams and who I have worked with for years at the church, told us that it was time we buy a house and she would help us. When we came to Tennessee in 1990, we moved into a church parsonage. We were there for ten years and have been renting since then. With Amy’s encouragement and help, we began the process of house hunting which would prove to be an adventure.

We spent two months looking at houses, most of which were drive bys and out of those we picked a few to look at inside. At one house, I fell through the deck. We didn’t pick that one. Another house was so saturated with cigarette smoke that we didn’t make it past the entrance area. We looked at one where the downstairs reeked of animal urine even through the forty thousand scented candles burning and another we didn’t even get inside because two giant dogs about took Amy’s hand off as she started through the door. We didn’t pick any those either.

We did see some nice houses and made offers on a couple of them but could not close the deal. I was getting frustrated with the whole thing and was ready to give up. Amy encouraged me to slow down and enjoy the process. I took her advice and continued.

We saw one house that we absolutely fell in love with. It was clean and ready to move in to. No painting, fixing, or remodeling would be required. We loved it and it felt right. We decided to make an offer on it but after a couple offers and counter offers, we were unable to come to an agreement. That took the wind out of our sails. The whole family was tired and discouraged. Amy told us to take a few days off from looking at and thinking about houses and just pray. That is what we did.

A few day’s had passed when I got a call from Amy saying that the people from the house we loved decided to meet us at our last offer, if we were still interested. We were definitely still interested. We started the process of securing financing and then waited. A target closing date was set so we began boxing up our house. We spent three weeks living out of and around boxes as two target dates for closing past. It felt at times like it was never going to happen. Finally, on November 24, we closed on our new house.

Since it was so close to Thanksgiving, we decided to wait until the Saturday after, to move. At 8:30 am, on Saturday morning, friends and family began to pour in and the work began. It looked like a colony of ants working together in unity. It was a beautiful sight. With deteriorating discs in my back and a partially torn ligament in my knee, I would have never survived the move without all the help. All of those beautiful people stuck with us until everything was moved.

Friends and family are also blessing us with house warming gifts. With those generous gifts,  we are purchasing some things we need. We are thankful and excited to have been able to purchase our first home but the thing I am most thankful for is good friends and family who went out of their way to help us get here.