Disappointment.

So the house saga continues….it’s a long story and I won’t bore too much with the details but basically we had our offer accepted on the house (and were ecstatic!), then lost it within about 3 days because two Estate Agents both expected the sale commission from the owner (we’d originally seen the house 8 months ago at a higher price through a different agent).  The owners had another offer on the table after accepting ours…so they had a predicament – they could either sell the house to us and try to reason with the estate agents (via the ombudsmen) to get a just outcome, or face potential litigation from the one they didn’t pay….or they could dump us as the buyer and go with a “clean” sale. 

You can guess which they did (fairly understandably from my perspective!!)

So another door has been firmly closed on us.  (It’s a shame because it was a lovely door attached to a lovely house!)

We keep praying for God to guide us (see last blog entry from my good lady!), and I’m sure He is indeed doing that….but we’re still really disappointed that we’ve lost another house that could have really worked well for us as a family home (and all because of Estate Agent ethics!)

Our current rented house is very nice in many ways but it doesn’t really feel like ‘home’ as we can’t really make it ours in the way we could if we owned it.  It was really cold in the winter too (old house, lots of draughts, very expensive to heat) so we really don’t want to do another winter here if we can possibly avoid it.

When we originally moved here in August we planned for a 6 month rental and negotiated the contract accordingly because the rental cost is really high.  It’s now 10 months later and we’re back to Square One on the house hunt. 

House buying and selling feels like it’s consumed too much of our thinking for way too long! 

We do have a roof over our heads, of course, and we’re very grateful for that!!

Sometimes, to be honest we feel like the psalmist in Ps10:1 “Why Lord do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?”

He hasn’t hidden himself of course…but the whole process hasn’t worked out in the way we’d hoped it would, and to be frank we oscillate wildly between complete frustration and annoyance on one hand to trusting that God has something waiting for us on the other hand.  Our huge daily challenge is to choose peace in the midst of the turmoil of it.

I reckon it’s fairly easy to trust God in theory, but living it day-to-day in the stuff that matters to you, when you’ve had disappointments like we have, feels much harder….

We're gonna choose to keep trusting through disappointment.

One day I’m sure we’ll look back and laugh!