Timing is everything. In 2008 the housing market in the United States crashed. One year later I became engaged, graduated from college, and got married. My then-fiance and I spent the summer of 2009 planning our wedding and considering in which neighborhood we might like to find an apartment. We were both in our early 20s, both recent college grads, and both living with our parents; we hadn’t even considered buying a house. Then the government told us they’d give us 8k if we did. So we started to look.
Timing is everything. During the summer of 2009 homes were flying off the market as quickly as they came on. We could scarcely schedule a showing on a house before it had sold; getting an offer in and accepted was nearly impossible. Twice we lost the “perfect house” to fast acting investors. Both times I was devastated. But then we saw the actual perfect house for us — a lone foreclosure in a neighborhood we ordinarily wouldn’t have been able to afford. “This one just came on the market today,” our realtor said. “It’s too perfect, we’ll never get it,” we said. We put in the offer the same day and held our breaths, and by what we later clearly perceived as an act of Providence, our offer was accepted.
Timing can be a funny thing. Sales of foreclosed homes can be tricky. We got a verbal acceptance of our offer in August. Our wedding was taking place October 17. We didn’t end up closing on our house until October 10. For two months we wondered if we would close on time, and if we didn’t, would we live in my parents’ basement or Alex’s parents’ attic. For two months we prayed we wouldn’t have to choose either. Closing day finally came, we breathed a sigh of relief, signed a whole lot of papers, and then I went to my bachelorette party.
Timing is everything. I am so grateful we bought our home before the days of Pinterest and Instagram. If those platforms had existed then and permeated the culture the way they do today, I would not have been able to rest until my house looked like all my boards and my pins and my favorite influencer’s backwoods summer home. In October of 2009 the only thing I knew about interior design was that Craigslist was a great place to find cheap furniture. It took about two hours to move into our new home because we owned nothing — two dressers full of clothes, a few boxes of books, and a free couch from Craigslist. We soon added to that a table and chairs and matching hutch — also from Craigslist — and a bed from Sam’s Club. Alex’s dorm-room-style Ikea rug and coffee table, and the mountain of wedding presents that had been accumulating at my parents’ house provided the finishing touches. Our castle was complete. We had nothing to complain about because we had nothing to compare it to.
Time is a funny thing. A decade has gone by and we’re still here, in the home of our honeymoon. Not much has changed, except just about every square inch has been painted, at least once, and not all our furniture is from Craigslist anymore (some still is, but not all), and all the bedrooms now have people sleeping in them. There’s an alarming amount of spilled cereal on the floors, as well as discarded socks, and the newest addition of wall art is the name “Trixie” scrawled across an upstairs wall several times in black marker. Six years ago we had the exterior painted, three years ago we put in a new bathtub, a year ago we got bunk beds, and last summer we re-sided the garage, built raised garden beds, and got a swing set from, you guessed it, Craigslist. Ok, so maybe a lot has changed. But it’s happened so gradually that I hardly notice it, until I see pictures from the early days (some included in this post). Ten years is, after all, a long time. Our family keeps growing and while our house doesn’t grow with us (wouldn’t that be nice) it does change with us, and makes space for us to grow.
At the beginning of this story I said that we had come to see getting this house as an act of Providence. And we still see it that way. Our home has been the source of so many gifts over the past ten years. It’s been the place all of our babies have come home to. It’s been a space for celebrations. It’s provided the soil and nutrients to power ten summers worth of home grown vegetables. One of the greatest gifts our home has brought us is our spiritual home. Our parish, just five blocks away, has given so much to our family — priests who feels like fathers, baptism for our children, friends who feel like family, godparents, and a candle that is always burning by a Tabernacle that is always filled. Maybe we still would have found our parish if we had lived somewhere else, but living where we do made it really easy. At the end of this litany of gifts I must add the obvious ones, the ones which I frequently fail to recognize. A safe place for my family to live and grow, and shelter from the elements. So common place, but as far as world goes, not common at all.
Someone recently came to our house for the first time and after looking around for a couple minutes she turned to me and said, “This is a happy home.” It wasn’t a question, “Do you like living here? Are you happy with the neighborhood?” It was a statement, and a true one. This is a happy home. I’m not sure what made her say that, maybe the crushed cereal on the floor or the doodles on the walls tipped her off. Or maybe it’s the thing we always hoped to accomplish with our house, that the peace and joy and love of Christ that we carry around in our hearts is starting to spill out and settle in the corners and cracks and crannies. And when people come into our home they can feel it. And that feeling creates a longing for another home, a better home, one that we are all meant for. One that I pray we all find.
And now, see what ten years can do to a home.
