The last several months of 2020 were some of the wildest, craziest, jump-in-with-both-feet-and-don’t-look-back days of my life. We had decided we wanted to sell our starter home, find some land with a farmhouse, move the chickens, get some goats, plant a garden, and otherwise live that rural life. But it wasn’t exactly easy in the housing market. It’s been a seller’s market for a while, with potential buyers scrambling to make above-asking offers without contingencies, home inspections, or even seeing the house. The timing for this endeavor was not exactly ideal.

In Northern Alabama, we’ve seen a lot of growth with various new employment opportunities, and it seems that our well-kept secret has been let out of the bag, and now everyone across the country knows this is a wonderful place to work, live and raise a family. And it is, but the heavy traffic (compared to what I’d grown accustomed), increase in population density, and apartment buildings and shopping complexes popping up where there were once fields of white cotton and grazing livestock makes me feel I’m living inside a concrete prison, and I needed to get out.

I felt a pull, a tug, a call, even. I needed to move farther past all of the noise and get to where I could see Orion on a clear January night, hear the beat of my own heart amid the silence of the sky, and see acres and acres of the uncultivated spread beneath my feet.

We got ourselves a realtor.

I’ve known Terry for over a decade, and we’ve sung together in choir and a smaller ensemble in church together for about as long. When he decided to leave the career he’d been in for as long as I’d known him and get his real estate license, I made him a sort of promise that whenever Hubby and I decided to sell our home, we’d let him know.

That time had come.

I cannot tell you enough wonderful things about Terry and our experience working with him. He listened to everything we said we wanted in a home, and though he sort of laughed at us, and said something to the effect of, “In this market? Good luck!,” he was ready and willing to help us in the search, shaking his head at me the whole time.

I mean, I didn’t want *that* much. Only enough land to raise farm animals (at least three acres), no subdivisions, no HOAs, no covenants, no city ordinances against farm animals, and plenty of space between houses, and that was just for the land! The house we wanted was a whole ‘nother story.

We wanted a house that felt like a home, with enough space for everyone. Our starter home was barely over 1,000 square feet, and we never intended to live in it as long as we did, so to say we had outgrown the space was an understatement. But even with the truth of that, we weren’t willing to move somewhere else just for the sake of more room, if it wasn’t God’s timing. I learned a lot about contentment in that little starter house, especially during quarantine, so moving was never about buying beyond our means or keeping up with the Joneses. We wanted to do something different and have an adventure, and moving was part of the deal. We wanted God’s hand to be over the entire situation, and we knew He’d have to be in it if any of this were to work out.

So to say that Terry the realtor put up with a lot of requests/demands in finding us the perfect place is a gross understatement.

He even told me, “I really don’t know that what you’re looking for is on the market right now.” We said we were willing to wait until the right thing came along, because we were also content to stay put and not move. We wanted to, but we were also waiting on God’s timing and His providence.

I guess none of us really thought we were going to find our eventual home so soon, because we had done very little to get our starter home ready for the market. Everything was just sort of casual. We wanted to move, but I guess we weren’t that motivated to pack everything up and overhaul the house to get it ready to sell until we knew what we were working for.

I don’t know that Terry thought he’d ever close this deal. At one point, I said to him, “Terry, I have every bit of faith that if God wants us to move, the angels will sing, and He’ll shine down a beam from heaven to the exact right house, exactly when He sees fit to do so.” We kind of laughed about that, and I was sort of joking about the angels singing and the beam from heaven, but deep down, I still believed that if it was meant to be, it would be.

And then the day came.

Terry called and said he found a couple of places that might fit the bill.

We met him at the first house, and our initial impression of the location was, “We didn’t even know these houses were back here. They’re kind of hidden.” We pulled into the driveway, and we were met with mature nut trees, acreage, a neglected barn, and as Terry put it, a “quirky” 43-year-old Southern-style farmhouse.

Quirky was right. Combinations of blue, pink, and red 70s-era shag carpet, a teal bathtub, baby blue walls in the master bedroom (with the red shag carpet), a master bath with lilac walls accented with busty-ladies-playing-the-clarinet wallpaper. Did I mention the zebra print linoleum, also in the master bath? There was a lot going on, and it was a lot to take in. Even so, we could see the potential; but potential means work. Hard work.

We moved on to the next house, and it was perfect. Turn-key. A huge kitchen worthy of dinner parties and entertaining. A beautifully manicured backyard. Bright sunshine pouring in through windows. An adorable loft area for the kids to play and have friends over. There was even a professional music room attached to the garage. Everything about that house screamed, “Buy me!”

When Terry asked Hubby and me which house we liked better, we didn’t even have to speak; we just looked at each other, turned back to Terry, and at the same time said, “The first one.”

Our excitement was short-lived, however, when the sellers pulled their listing from the market after just one weekend. It seemed the dream was over, and we went back to house hunting. No matter how many other houses we saw, none of them were right. We even had the chance to look at a house across the street from the one we wanted, and I couldn’t even set up the appointment to see it, because, “Why would I want to buy a house with a view to the home I actually want?” I couldn’t do it. Neither of us could. So we stayed put.

Time went by, and we just couldn’t get that house out of our minds, or off our hearts. I kept telling Hubby, “That’s our house. I know it, so I’ll wait. If it’s meant to be, it will happen.”

One night after ensemble practice, I asked Terry if he could inquire about the reason the couple pulled their house from the market. He looked into it for us, got some answers, and I don’t know what all went on behind the scenes, but somehow, the owners found out we were still interested, and they invited us to make them an off-market offer.

The rest is history.

We are now the proud owners of the quirky 70s-era farmhouse, and we couldn’t be more happy and blessed. That’s not to say there haven’t been challenges, tears, and “I think we’d have been better in Egypt” moments. More on those things another day.

In what seemed like lightning, we scrambled to get our starter house market-ready. Hubby and I stayed up until the wee morning hours painting, cleaning, packing, and sprucing for eight straight days. Even Terry came to help us. Did I mention he’s the best realtor and worth his weight in gold?

The house went live on a Thursday, we had a record fourteen showings over one weekend, and the house was listed as pending by Sunday. Within forty-five days, both houses closed. The timing was nothing short of a miracle. I know Terry was surprised, and I definitely got to have that moment where I looked at him and said, “Can you hear the angels singing, Terry? Do you see the beam from heaven?”

God moved heaven and earth for us to have this farmhouse. I don’t know all the reasons, but I trust that I’ll learn the whys as we walk this road together. He doesn’t always reveal things in big, or fast, ways, the way we often think He should. Sometimes it’s in the quieter, smaller voice we have to get still long enough, and patient enough, to find.

And I don’t know about anyone else, but for me, I’m pretty sure it’s easier to hear His voice out in the country, where the sky goes on forever and Orion is visible on January nights. A little slice of heaven, a kiss from God, a whispered “I love you” to my soul.