We're moving!!!!

After several days of waiting (soooo not easy for me) we have finally heard good news! Praise the Lord!  

To recap what's been happening with our moving adventure: Our appraiser refused to make some minor changes on our appraisal and demanded that we get an entirely new appraisal done.  We found this out only a couple days before we were supposed to close and had to reschedule our settlement date as well as our moving date.

I'm still a little frustrated about that, but mainly just happy that it's over and we can move on.  The appraiser finished Monday evening and the underwriter approved the loan last night.  HUGE sigh of relief! 

Our new plan is to close tomorrow (Eeeep!) and move this weekend.  I am dying with excitement and so so ready to be done living out of boxes.  Our house looks like a maze of cardboard right now.  

I am also way stoked to have a whole house to decorate!  I have been slacking on my "Pinterest-ing" until things were more finalized, but I have a feeling that will be taking up all of my free time soon. ;)  My first project is gonna be the craft room/office, I think.  I am on the hunt for an old armoire that can be repurposed into this beauty:

Cottage Hill

Is this not the awesomest thing you've ever seen?  And hubby has a huge, new garage for projects just like this, how perfect! ;)  I shall be posting soon with some more of my favorite ideas so far.  

Worry vs. Trusting

This week has been quite a bummer for Doad and I.  Unless the Lord provides a miraculous softening of hearts, it looks like we won't be moving this weekend after all.

It's a long story and I don't know all the details, but basically in order for our loan to be fully approved, the underwriter requested a revised appraisal.  (Long story short: it needed to be updated to have our names on it instead of a previous buyer that fell through.)  This should be simple and easy, but the appraiser is refusing to do this on the basis that "we are not his clients".

According to our loan officer, this is not true.  This is the part where I don't know all the details, but according to the way our loan and contract are set up we ARE legally his client and he is required to make the changes.  He is saying otherwise, but has also said that for a hefty chunk of change he MIGHT be able to do something about it.  Essentially blackmail...  grrrrr!

Our loan officer made her final case yesterday.  We are waiting to hear back about how it went.  Please pray for us that the Lord would soften this man's heart and that our loan officer was able to present her case in a gracious, organized and irrefutable manner.

If this does not work, it means that we will need to get an entirely new appraisal and start a lot of this process over again.  While this isn't the end of the world, it does mean a delay in closing and moving - which also means scrambling and rescheduling as all of our plans were to move into the house this Saturday.

I've been clinging to this verse from Sunday's devotional on SheReadsTruth:

I love it when your devotions just seem to hit you where it matters.  I don't always feel like I can hear the Lord speaking clearly to me, but it sure has been clear this week.  Check out these words from Monday's devotion:

Even though I'm frustrated and don't understand why this glitch with moving has come up, I am still trusting and resting in the promise that God is fighting for us.  He is writing our story.  I will remain calm and keep praying for a miracle. :)

Friends, will you pray with me?

Please and thank you :)

Exciting News For Doad and Jess!!

Happy New Year. Wow! So much has happened since I last posted. Our biggest news is this:

We bought a house!!!

Isn't is darling?  I'm so SO excited and so amazed and blessed by the way the Lord led us to this house.  It reminded me a lot of this post (minus the con artists).  God has been so faithful to us throughout the searching and I just feel so reassured about this move because I can see His hand in our story.  

I have to admit that I was starting to get a little discouraged.  I was feeling like we'd seen almost every house in MD for sale in our price range and none of them seemed to be a good fit for both me and Doad.  He would love one house and I would hate it and vice versa.  Or we would just both not like it.  

A couple Saturdays ago we had yet another unsuccessful day of house-hunting with our agent.  I just began praying to the Lord on our way home and asking him what we should do next.  I remembered how he came through for us with a car and wanted to trust him the same way for our house.  I felt this strong urge to get back online and look at the listings again.  When we got home I pulled up the website again and started looking at the houses thinking maybe we missed one.  Well we did... sort of.  There was a new one from the day before that we hadn't seen yet.  A really nice one.  

We emailed our agent and asked about it.  She told us she could take us to see it on Monday at 2PM.  That worked perfectly for us because Doad and I both had that week off (love God's timing).  When Monday came we found out that there were already 2 offers on this house and if we wanted it we'd have to make an offer that day.  Well, we loved it, made an offer, signed a million papers, and got an email back about 4 hours later with the signed contract attached.  They accepted our offer!

It took months to get to this point, but once we found the house it all happened so quickly!  We are beyond happy and cannot wait to move in.  Just 10 more days to go!  God is GOOD!

:)