I had been struggling mightily with what I am now calling the Edgewood trial of 2017 (which started in 2016). The struggle? Learning to interpret feelings of the Spirit and feelings of fear. Do I really receive revelation, or do I just convince myself of it sometimes. Have I been led by false light? Am I deserving of revelation? The questions just started multiplying and dragging me deeper and deeper into my "death bed." Now if it had only been this problem dragging me down, that wouldn't be complete justification for my dramatic feelings (in my mind at least). I was also struggling with being faced with the reality of my parenting with 2 grown children now. I can completely relate to Lehi and Sariah on their deathbeds while aboard the ship while their son was tied to a mast in the the storm by his brothers. I was low. Seriously low. I didn't get out of bed for 2 (except to perform the necessities of getting my children to school and fed) days low.
We found a house in Edgewood in October. Had a contractor meet us at the house to talk about renovations before we made an offer on it. Decided that we could make the house work, and proceeded with an offer. It was a short sale that had 2 loans on it. We did some research on how much was owed and percentages banks usually are willing to write off, and made an offer. After we signed the paperwork I began to be stricken with fear. Even with all the renovations we were still going to have to use a barn on the property for some of the living space. We would essentially be living in 2 houses (and it was a jaunt to the barn). I was also realizing just how far of a commute it would be for Nate. He had assured me that it would be fine, because we always factor that in to any decision we make, but it began to bother me. It also bothered me that if anyone came to visit they would feel like it took forever to get to our house. I began to fear that I didn't really want to have as big of a farm as I had planned. I mean every fear I could ever have about anything came hitting at my thoughts all the time. Nate kept assuring me that the house would be beautiful and we could make all my fears work. I was convinced that my feelings of fear was for the unknown, not that we shouldn't live there.
I contend that feelings of fear are the hardest to interpret.
Weeks and weeks go by and still no word from the bank on our offer. We started hearing that it could take a year with the bank that was involved. Our realtor suggested that we look at houses again as a back up plan. I don't like confusing myself, but agreed that it was something we should do. We looked at several more houses until we came upon what I will refer to as the A house. There was a feeling that came over me of it being home. It has some problems that will turn out being a big deal, namely the kitchen and the master bath and closet. But despite those 2 things, everything else was perfect with a little Heather love. Emma was with us on the house hunting trip and was able to give her opinion -which was extra special because she was home from college on her Christmas break. We took the rest of the kids to see it the following day. Everyone loved it and picked out their rooms. It was a completely different feeling at this house than we had at the B house that we had an offer on already.
We decided to sleep on making a decision and pray about it. Here's how my prayer basically looked. Listen, I'm not sure what's going on. I'm confused and I don't think I'm capable of revelation. Obviously I felt good about the last one and now I feel good about this one. Am i being tested to stay the course or to change course. I haven't a clue. If you could speak to me in a language that I can't mess up, that would be really great because I have zero confidence in myself and this process. When I finished my prayer I felt this immediate list of things I had concerns of for the B house and this check list of all the things A house fixed for me. It was like 'you were worried about ___, I fixed that. you were worried about___, fixed. ' We decided to make an offer. It was countered. We made another. It was countered again. We realized that the person didn't actually want to sell their home. We got a list of improvements that they made 8 years ago and thought they got 100 percent return on those investments. Never mind that the house still looked like the day it was build in 1995. No other upgrades had been done, but windows and furnace and rock in the driveway- 8 years ago. They were still making more than they paid for the house in 2007 at the height of the market before it tanked. They weren't even taking a loss- which we are on our house that we have to sell. We just can't afford to get into a situation that we will find ourselves upside down in again.
So, what was that entire exercise in? I didn't know, and thus my death bed. How could I ever trust anything ever again. Why didn't it work out. I know the guy selling the house has agency that even his realtor thought he was using poorly, but why be led down the road just to be denied? The same day we walked away from A, we got an email from the realtor of house B saying that they were sure that the bank would be getting back to us within a week. More confusion.
Several years ago when we were trying to decide where we were going to live and practice, we had flown out to Kentucky for a job interview with a practice there. As soon as I stepped off he plane I knew it wasn't right, but it's my husband that needs to figure it out so I wasn't about to ruin it. It wasn't until the plane ride back home that he told me that he didn't feel right about things. I was relieved. Problem was, we had no other eggs in our basket. No other job. We decided to exercise faith and remove the temptation to accept the job if it was offered simply because we didn't have anything else. He made the call and removed his name from consideration and 2 days later we had 2 job offers here in NM. One of them was buying the practice we currently have. So, was this our Kentucky experience all over again? Were we supposed to rescind our offer to remove the temptation to do the wrong thing? Or, was it the right thing all along?
After a long conversation Nate finally figured out the source of my fear. Not having a plan. So we decided that we should rescind the offer and hope either the A house called in a month saying they changed their mind and will accept our offer if we submit it again, or something else will come up.
Here's the interesting thing. As soon as I hit send on the notice to my realtor to rescind the offer. All my stress went away. Not having a plan had no feelings of fear, but having the wrong plan had me full of fear.
The next day was Sunday and we were sitting in Sunday School talking about J.S., the first vision, and him going to get the plates. It starts in verse 50 of JSH where he is going to find the plates for the first time. Then in 53 he says: "I made an attempt to take them out, but was forbidden by the messenger, and was again informed that the time for bringing them forth had not yet arrived."
There it was. My answer. It's not that I hadn't been listening, or doing what I was supposed to, the time had just not arrived.
The drama didn't stop there because the realtor from house B wrote to us saying how devastated her client was and they hadn't submitted our request yet in the hopes that they could convince us to shred it. They said that we could continue to look for houses, but that they really wanted us to buy this one and that the client didn't want to show up to divorce court having lost the sale of the house. Talk about a guilt trip! Why does this house keep haunting me and tempting me? It's been 3 months since our initial offer, and we had too much time to consider our needs. Why we went down the wrong road first, we will probable never know. Why we went down another wrong road? Probably to help me know exactly what I needed in a house out there and fully commit myself to the idea of the sacrifices I was being asked to make. Deciding to simplify and downsize your life is not easy. Especially when you are doing it completely voluntarily. Most people think we are crazy coming from our current situation to what we are going to, but it makes sense to us, and that's all that matters. My kids are in school out there, and we are needed elsewhere in the vineyard. It's time for a new dream.
We had to say again to house B no. All we can do now is continue looking for houses, holding out for a soft heart on house A, and keep praying that we will do the right thing at the right time. Until then, it's all about faith in knowing there's a plan and not just being able to enact it yet.
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