Dog, House

Our landlord is selling our house so our options are to buy the house or move on out. 

We are moving out.  While the house has been a great place for us, it is one windstorm away from blowing down.  The questionable electrical and plumbing systems along with 20 years of neglect make this property something we don't want to invest in

Over the past few weeks, we have been discussing the options of buying or renting again.  Buying is obviously a smarter investment than renting but we have better odds of getting into a house that we actually want if we rent. Such a conundrum. 

The market up here is so fickle.  Our house down in Olympia was on the market for a few days and we had two offers and a bidding war.  About 2 weeks after we were under contract the market stalled out. Super stall.  Think about driving a stick shift for the first time and you are at a stop sign on a hill and trying to start in third gear.  It is so frustrating that you get out in the middle of the intersection and make your dad drive.  Hypothetically of course.  A season goes by with houses sitting on the market for 3-4 months and then suddenly, the market is on the move again and the battle to buy one of the few houses begins.  

We have a few months to get out of the current home and into something new. In addition to all of the other things we are praying for in our family right now, housing is on the top of the list.  We finally took the plunge and put an offer on a house that my entire family fell in love with this past weekend.  It is meticulously updated and well cared for home in a great area and it even has a built-in dog door for our dog that we are dreaming about.  Matt and I barely finished praying over the house situation last night and we got a message saying that there would be no counter offers...the sellers accepted a full price offer from someone else.  We were shocked at how quickly God answered that prayer!  All of us were disappointed by the news.  Not only was I sad that this super clean, beautiful home wouldn't be ours, I was suddenly feeling loss over our imaginary dog that we can't get if we rent instead of buy.  No kidding, I'm equally sad about not getting THAT house as I am about not getting a dog.  Oh dear.  This dog thing is getting serious.

I recently read that wisdom is "the knowledge that some things are out of your control or that you need help in some area".  How true is that? Identifying that you don't know everything is actually the thing that makes you wise.  The only thing that is clear in our housing search at this point is that we have no idea what we need to do.  Cheers for being wise!