when it rains...

(I wrote this two days ago on the journey home...just getting a chance to post it now!) 

I’m typing these words on Easter Sunday from high in the sky, somewhere over middle America, chasing the sunset as we fly west. The colors are like a rainbow, with the sky a deep blue, fading slowly into golds, oranges and reds at the horizon.  

We are about two hours into a six hour flight from DC to Sacramento, and I am two chapters into The Hunger Games. I decided to take a break from Katniss’s fatal circumstances to write a bit, to process through the roller coaster of events and emotions we have experienced over the past week. There’s a big part of me that wants to shut down and stop writing when things in life feel hectic and overwhelming, but I know I always feel better when I take the time to write. For some reason, the act of writing helps me to stay more engaged with myself and the people around me. It’s good therapy. It helps me stay present and keep a positive frame of mind.

So, here’s the scoop...

Four days ago we took a red-eye flight from Sacramento to Atlanta and then on to Norfolk. We got into Norfolk around 9am EST, got our rental car, and drove south to Virginia Beach, our future home. We met with our realtor, Patti, by 11:15 that morning, feeling a bit delirious from minimal sleep and sustained only by prayer, adrenaline, and a hefty dose of Starbucks. We saw about twenty houses over the course of Thursday and Friday, and by Friday evening, Patti cut us loose to go pray and sleep over the big decision we needed to make in choosing our future home. As we left her office, our eyes were glazed over and all I wanted was a martini and to fall into an HGTV-induced coma in our hotel room.

But alas! We had to go to church. It was Good Friday, after all, and we were cordially invited by the doctor Chris will be working with in VA to attend a church service that evening with him and his family. We gathered into the sanctuary, into old wooden pews that conjured so many memories of the southern churches of my childhood. The room was completely dark except for one candle that burned dimly in the front of the church. There were at least 150 people gathered there, all of us completely silent as we sat in the dark chapel, reflective of what the day symbolized.

I tried to focus my mind on the significance of the day but my mind kept reeling with details from all the homes we’d seen over the past two days. They ran through my head like a film strip, one image after another, all of them starting to blur together. But as I sat in the silence of the chapel, I noticed there was one house in particular I could not stop thinking about. I kept trying to envision how we would fit our furniture into it, how painstakingly difficult and stressful it would be to renovate, and how potentially impractical it was for our growing family. I repeatedly caught myself thinking about it and tried to refocus my mind on God and pray that my thoughts would be on Him instead. I prayed that He would show us which house He had for us, that He would guide us into a decision. But this house, like a high school crush, I could not get out of my mind.

As the service ended and Chris and I walked out to the parking lot, I told him that I felt a bit guilty because my mind was so distant from what was happening during the service.I told him that I could not stop thinking about this one house in particular. He said he felt relieved because he was thinking about the same house too and couldn’t get his mind off of it. The fact that we both felt so strongly about this house was very validating for us. We felt that perhaps God was already starting to answer our prayers by giving us clarity and unity about the decision.

The future family K beach home?

Long story short, we went back to view this one particular house again on Saturday and we have put an offer on it. Our offer is remarkably lower than the asking price, which was quite over-priced based on market comparisons. This charming home is 1.3 miles from the beach. It is in a beautiful neighborhood, reminiscent of our Alamo Heights days, and is in a recommended school district. But...the inside needs a lot of work. It needs a family to come along and pour love and beauty back into it. And I am hoping that family is us...but apparently, the seller is “in shock” over our offer and may not be willing to come down significantly on the price, in which case we will walk away. We should hear more by tomorrow. We are trusting that God will direct us to the right decision and that He will provide a rental home if this house is not for us. There are no other options for us to buy...not that we feel good about. So we wait, again, trusting in His plan and timing and provision for it all. 

In other news...

On Thursday afternoon we stopped for a quick coffee break in between our house showings. It was a cold and rainy day and I was starting to crash and burn after so little sleep, so I ran into a Starbucks to get some caffeine for Chris, Patti, and myself. As I was waiting in line I pulled out my phone to check email and a new message downloaded. It read...

CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE RECEIVED YOUR LOC FROM CHINA!

Really? Really, God? Now? 

Stimulation on top of more stimulation! 

When it rains it pours! 

I brought our three coffees back to the car and told Chris. We both laughed out loud because before this house-hunting trip we’d said to ourselves, “Wouldn’t it be typical to get our LOC during this trip?” Anyhow, Tiffany from our agency called about an hour later and started rattling off a massive list of things to do now that we have our LOC. She was speaking in another language, talking about the names of all the forms that needed to be completed and so forth, and I tried to explain that we were out of town, running on about 2 hours of sleep, and on input-overload from house-hunting. I wish I had been more excited than I was, but in that moment I was so far beyond my threshold for mental and emotional engagement. 

So, when we get home it will be time to fly back into paperwork mode, the last batch to conquer before we can get our boy!  Based on the timing of our LOC, we expect to travel to China around the middle of July.

And...

You all probably heard about the F-18 crash in VA Beach on Good Friday. We drove by the sight of the crash a few minutes before it happened. It is a MIRACLE that no one in town was hurt, a true God thing. It feels significant that it happened on Good Friday, as this event was such an illustration of how God’s love and mercy still shine through and overcome...even on the darkest of days. 

Chris and I are also starting to get weirded out by the number of disasters that seem to occur when we go out of town. Two years ago today, we were in southern California for a little getaway before Chris deployed, when suddenly the beach house we were renting started to sway back and forth. I thought it might be from the AmTrack that ran right behind the house, but Chris’s eyes met mine as I looked at him in fear, and he said, “Earthquake! Go get Lucy.” He grabbed Tess and I ran to get Lu and we held our breath and our girls tightly beneath a door frame as the ground rolled beneath us.

And about one year ago we were in Hawaii during the devastating Japan tsunami. We heard the shrill alarms and pounding on our door at midnight, telling us to evacuate. We woke up our girls and packed some basic belongings we thought we might need for survival and got in our rental car and made our way for higher ground. After sitting in a hot car for about an hour with two screaming girls, we found a youth hostel that would take us for the night. Overall, Hawaii was spared.

And now, this spring and Easter, a fighter jet fell out of the sky and crashed near an intersection we’d driven by minutes earlier with our realtor. F-18s fly daily over the VA Beach area, and something like this hasn’t happened in 20 years.

We are starting to see a pattern here. Maybe we should just stay home. It kind of makes me scared for our China trip! But...we have made it out unharmed each time, praise God.

Well, it’s back to The Hunger Games for now...

On a closing note...here are some things I’m thankful for today...

• Jesus...His life...Life to the fullest...Amen.
• My husband, who understands words like “escrow.”
• My parents, who are the BOMB grandparents, and who have flown out to Cali to keep our girls for us so we could do this house-hunting trip.
• The opportunity to buy a home and make it ours over the long haul, even if it doesn’t work out with this house.
• The ocean.
• Sour Patch Kids: the perfect plane snack.