My wife and I bought our first home in Sidney, Montana in April of 2014. Eight years later to the month, we have now sold our first home.
Six months of it being on the market followed two years of renting it out to others. Being out-of-state homeowners and landlords was a stretch and taxed our resources in both tangible and intangible ways. Only now as that circumstance comes to an end are we beginning to realize how much.
But come to think of it, it has been over five years since we first began considering the sale of our first home while at the same time feeling unable to do so. Having bought the house on 5th Street SW in an inflated housing market - the Bakken oilfield boom was still in full swing then - the answer we got from realtors we asked advice from was again and again to wait on selling until prices recovered, or else settle for getting significantly less than we originally paid.
On further reflection, I remember now how when we moved to Greeley in September of 2019 we were still overseeing renovations on our Sidney house from two states away. The kitchen and both bathrooms got new flooring and fixtures, and we replaced a few other sundry items in preparation for first renting the house out, then eventually selling it.
The requisite reliance on others to take care and do a good job was difficult and sometimes profoundly disappointing, and the whole business felt simultaneously both foolish and necessary - never a fun combination, much less over an extended period of time like two-and-a-half years.
Renting our current home sight unseen, we moved from the state with the motto Oro y Plata - Spanish for"Gold and Silver" - to the state with the motto Nil Sine Numine - Latin for "Nothing without Providence." Our family saw our current abode here in Greeley for the first time in-person the day we moved in, almost like opening a present on Christmas morning, or else Congress passing a major piece of legislation to find out what's in it.
But the whole business was cut to fit Colorado's state motto, we think, being really and truly Providential as we believe.
No, the timing of all important points related to buying, renting, and selling homes may not have always been met by us with the utmost enthusiasm or cheer - or even a sense of well-being, for that matter. Yet we nevertheless have to give both credit and thanks to the Lord for prayers answered and all necessary provision faithfully supplied in His perfect timing. And how could we have ever doubted that He would faithfully provide where we endeavored to follow His leading and direction?
Even now as we celebrate the bittersweet reality of selling our first home, we know our hopes and intentions to be more choosy this time around as we see the last chapter closing and a new one beginning. Yet whatever comes to pass next, the wisest and safest course must always surely be some continuation of the theme of all our family life to-date, trusting that God's timing and provision is all-sufficient and the only state of being which can expect blessing.
If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.
We hope and pray, then, that it is the Lord's will that we buy our second home in the coming months here in Colorado - at the proper cost, in the right location, of a certain size and layout. Then we will really, truly, and fully be here - in some sense for the first time in two-and-a-half years of feeling divided in our attention, still in transition so long as we had to keep one eye and ear on Montana.
All such details considered, and more besides, it was good that the Lord brought us to Montana from Ohio in 2012, and from Montana to Colorado in 2019. But I say with the utmost enthusiasm that we are glad to finally feel as though the time has come for us to be here in Colorado, truly and fully, for however long it pleases our Maker that we tarry.
