Neighborhood Blessings

This week, I've learned that the house you think you want is not always the house you will be blessed to live in.

We moved into our house 10 years ago. When we bought it, I will tell you that it was not my favorite house in the neighborhood. This section was all newly built homes and there were others that I loved more. They had more space, bigger kitchens and some were even better built. I initially discounted this house because of those reasons.

The others that I liked were out of our price range at the time, so I started to look elsewhere even though I LOVED this subdivision.

My husband came home one night after working and told me that he had just sold Saladmaster (our business) to a new customer who happened to be a builder. The builder had a couple houses for sale in this neighborhood that I loved. One of them happened to be the house that I discounted.

So, we took a second look. Since he was now a customer of ours, he decided that he would give us an even better deal on the house. My husband was sold before we even saw it again.

I decided that I could live with the kitchen and change it later. I also could not deny the fact that I loved the lot the house sits on.

It is a large wooded corner at the end of a dead end street and neighbored a private piece of property. Privacy is always a plus in a big neighborhood and something we were seeking. Apartment living will do that to you.

We bought the house, thinking to ourselves that we would move in 3-5 years. We even started the process of building a much larger new home about 5 years ago and then stopped when the lots sold out from under us in less than 12 hours. The newer lots that were released after that, doubled in price and knocked the house right out of our price range. A month or so later, we put an offer on another house shortly after we lost that one. The sellers accepted a higher offer from another buyer.

So, we took those as signs to stay put.

The funny thing is that if we had ended up buying either one of those houses and entered into this economy with that mortgage payment, we would most likely be struggling. Things would be tight, anyway. It almost seems like someone was watching after us and you know I believe there was.

We will have lived in this house for 10 years at the end of this month. It is starting to show it's age. A busy family of 4 and dogs can wear a house out. We've started to make plans to redo our kitchen and add a sunroom in the next couple years. I'm very excited about that.

There are kids everywhere in this 'hood. They literally run in my front door and out the back some days. I can walk into my yard at any given time and find neighbors hanging out there. Sometimes before I even have my bra on.

So much for privacy, eh?

I wouldn't trade them for the world, though.

They take care of my kids on a moment's notice. Their kids are there to constantly entertain mine. When someone is sick they bring meals, weed a garden, mow the lawn, take care of kids and chickens (yes, that's a story for another time).

So maybe, this house is not what I initially thought my dream house to be. Maybe it doesn't have the kitchen I think I want or the big front porch I have fantasies of.

Or maybe my dreams are different now. Being thankful for what you have does that to a dream.

What I've Learned is that the blessing is not really in my house (although it is a blessing in itself) but in the people that live around my house and I thank God for unanswered prayers.

For more lessons learned this week hop on over to Musings of a Housewife.