Sweet Home (not) Alabama

The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness . . . (2 Peter 3:9) ***yes, I’m using this verse out of context, but the spiritual principle about God’s timing is true

If you’ve known me for any length of time, you know my dream has been to have my own house. We’ve been nomads for the length of our marriage — a few years (or months) here and then a few more somewhere else. I’ve always embraced each new location/adventure, but as the years have gone on, my desire for my own place has grown.

Seeing that we live in the Middle East, owning a house that we don’t live in for 10 months of the year has been utterly impractical. So for the past 10 years or so, I have repeatedly turned my desires over to God and acknowledged that he is my home regardless of my physical location. I wrote about that most recently here.

And today I own a house. In Texas. Surprised? I am. Especially because as recently as August I declared, “I am NOT buying a house in Texas. That would be ridiculous. I don’t know anyone there and I’m not flying all the way to Texas only to have to travel again on my vacation.”

But God moves. I have been perusing Redfin/Zillow for the past 5 years, focusing on different areas over time: multiple areas of California, Nevada, Idaho, Arizona, and Washington State, comparing prices, lot sizes, taxes, proximity to airports, etc. We’ve been saving for a down payment, putting away money every month, so when the timing was right (e.g. a market downturn . . . still waiting for that!), we’d be ready.

I started looking at Texas in November after I finally admitted defeat — even Arizona had gotten too expensive for me. And I trolled Redfin the way that I used to plan our family trips: looking at street views, “walking” through neighborhoods road by road, reading online forums regarding traffic and pros and cons of particular neighborhoods, figuring out which areas to rule out because of commute hours traffic or distance from major highways . . . it delightfully scratched my research itch.

[Side note: North Texas made sense because Josh’s company has a main office there so if we ever wanted to transition back to the US, he could possibly look for a job transfer to that office and he occasionally goes there for work and would be able to check in on our empty house. It’s also within 45 minutes of Dallas airport so direct flights to and from Dubai/Abu Dhabi.]

We made plans to land in Texas at Christmas to do a field research trip — to scout it out so I would have a better idea of what I was viewing online and to help us narrow our search. I started messaging with a local realtor to help us and to show us around when we were in town.

When she sent us some available houses to help narrow down our likes and dislikes we decided to go ahead and make an offer on a house . . . or 2 or 3 as needed (spurred on by the hot market and stories of people getting iced out time after time). Surprisingly, our first offer was accepted. We’d seen several house listings and rejected them, another we loved but it was at the top of our asking price and our realtor said we’d have to go in with an offer 30k over that (nope), and one that we were going to offer on, but got snapped up before we could get the paperwork completed.

And that’s how Ms. “I’ll never buy a house sight unseen because that would be ridiculous” came to do exactly that. In a city I’d never even visited. At 1:30 in the morning. (I had to wake Josh up to sign the contract.)

But God.

As I was thinking it over, God reminded me that in my adult life I have moved into houses sight unseen over and over again and it has always been fine. He has provided and I’ve made the best of it. And technically I had more information on this house than any that we have lived in up to this point. Our amazing realtor took videos of every room in the house, narrating all the way, pointing out all the things I needed to see to be confident that this was the house for us.

So I have my house. We closed on it during our “scouting week” and 2 days later flew to CA to celebrate the wedding of our oldest son. It was, “bye, bye house! See you in June!” with the happiness that I’d have a home base for summer vacation and lots of work ahead of me — not on the house itself, but it was completely empty so would need beds, furniture, dishes, etc. All part of my future summer plans . . . no more suitcase summers for me! From now on, my summers would be spent playing house.

And then the kids’ school announced that the first 2 weeks back after Christmas break would be remote (Thanks Covid, you’ve been a doll). So we opted to spend the week following the wedding back at our house in Texas, taking care of some of the details that would help make our entrance to summer vacation easier.

We bought mattresses and spent way too much time at Costco, taking full advantage of our new membership to get dishes, pots, pans, bedding, and all the other things we’d need on a day to day basis in a house come summer.

Then God.

Our first night in the house, while camping on the floor with newly purchased comforters and fleece blankets (mattresses and other furniture were all victims of supply chain problems), Josh got a phone call asking if he was willing to apply for a job in the Texas office of his current company. Starting as soon as they could sort the paperwork out.

In one phone call my summer house started looking like it could be my forever house, but nothing was certain. We decided to be open and move ahead, but holding everything loosely. And after a lovely week in Texas we headed back to UAE — starting our 12th year in the Middle East. And lovely Covid rules, making lives more complicated since 2020 — 2 years later, when most people find covid to be nothing more than a mild illness, we should not be jumping through hoops and treating it like a deadly contagion . . . but I digress.

Anyway, Caleb tested positive at the airport, right before checking in for our flight. (Perfectly fine though. Whatever.) So he and I headed back to our house and spent a week there before testing again and heading back to UAE. Oops, positive again (and another $500 down the drain, nope, not getting on my soapbox). Long story short, we ended up staying in Texas for several weeks because I wasn’t willing to blow any more money on Covid tests and Josh was coming back to the US on a work trip at the beginning of February and by that point I was ready to never return to UAE because I was A) Loving North Texas and B) Super annoyed with UAE.

Avoiding my soapbox, I’ll just say in the span of a week, between us getting stuck in the US and not able to return home and Josh in UAE facing other Covid hassles, it was as if God had gotten out the bullhorn and shouted: YOUR TIME OVERSEAS IS OVER. KHALAS! RETURN TO THE US. DO NOT PASS GO. On repeat. Thank you Lord for answering our prayer that you’d lead us clearly when the time came. It could have been a little less dramatic and I would have gotten the message, but my bad. I did ask that it would be obvious.

So Caleb finally tested negative and we headed back to UAE in February knowing that job or no job, we were coming home to Texas at the end of the school year. Coming home to our actual home that we own. Overnight we went from “let’s see what happens with this job” to “we’re moving to the US, job or no job.” We had the flexibility to do this because we 1) decided to buy in Texas, 2) resisted the urge to go over our budget. Early on, we did have a long discussion about the “perfect house” that was more than we wanted to spend. Thankfully we kept our heads and stuck to our original plan that called for buying a house that we could afford even if Josh wasn’t working. Whew!

I wrote the above back in February and now we’re in April. I’ve been waiting for all of the details to unfold/make itself known . . .

Josh got the job. The papers were signed last week. He starts at the end of May. He will work from Abu Dhabi for the first few weeks and then we will head to Texas together after school gets out. The office here will contribute to the costs of our move home. The gaining office will provide the paychecks that will help pay for our very expensive stray animals to fly home (It’s cheaper to fly people than animals — the dogs should be in business class at this rate). It looks like we will be sleeping in our own Texas beds 2 months from today. Praise God.

In our Life Group we are working through a Bible reading plan together (1 chapter a day, nothing too intimidating) and are currently in the book of Joshua. Over and over again the Israelites are told to make a pillar of stones to mark a place where God has been faithful so they don’t forget in the future. I was wondering how I could make my own pillar/monument in my new house to remind myself of God’s faithfulness in in the future. Do I put a stack of rocks in the backyard? Should I plant a tree? But then I realized my blog posts are my pillars. A longstanding testament to God’s provision in my life. I can go back and see over and over again how he has provided. How I have wrestled with anxiety, raising children, moving all over the world, and yet, he has provided more than I could have asked or imagined, over and over again.. To him be the glory. Amen.