Angels Singing

Today, our house formally listed on the Alaska Multiple Listing Service. Tomorrow, between 3 and 4pm, we will vacate for the house's first showing.

The house looks great. She is baring both cleavage and thigh most appealingly. Many thanks to our stellar realtors, Mary and Ron Stephens, whom we first met 3.5 years previous, when we relocated to Anchorage.

Mary was almost killed last August from a brutal car accident during that month's torrential, record-breaking, birch-beetle-exterminating rains. She still walks gingerly and tires easily, but a better realtor, one cannot easily conceive. She is both business-like and motherly; generous and trustworthy. Ron, her husband of many years, is one of her "assistants", and is a great complement, particularly when it comes to moving furniture. Evan thinks Ron is "cute."

I awoke at 5am this morning. Staring ogle-eyed at the bedroom ceiling, I thought about today becoming "official" and feeling despair over the lack of "exciting" homes in our buyer-price-range. So, I got up early, watched movie trailers and the latest "Ugly Betty" episode, and tried to muster some degree of hope and trust for my and my family's future. Really, the only house I have loved so far was one Bruce didn't care for and is now sold.

Bruce managed to "find" some annual leave from work in order to look at some houses this afternoon with Mary and Ron. We met at 1pm at a listing that Mary had hand-picked for us. I prayed on the way to the house, asking God to "prepare my heart"; to help me not compare every house to our current home; to not lose hope.

Upon crossing the threshold of this first house of the afternoon, I fell in love. The tightness around my heart loosened for the first time in what feels like forever, and I truly felt it was a home I would not feel any regret over moving to. Bruce loved it too. I felt in that space the kind of light and space that I feel in our current home. I think I heard angels singing.

So, tomorrow we sign an initial offer, and get the ball rolling.

I told Bruce that if this all falls apart, I will be in a place of despair that he has never-before-now seen during our entire marriage. Though an exaggeration, it must be admitted that this particular house is a rarity, and meets almost all our criteria. "Love" is what I wanted to find; but "love" puts me in a state of terrible vulnerability. I am thankful for a husband who can, simultaneously, be both passionate and dispassionate, and help me through this process.

Driving home this afternoon, for the first time in awhile, I didn't feel an enormous sense of loss pulling into our driveway, and seeing the face of the beloved house that has been a cocoon of renewal and unearthly joy. For a time, I had come to believe that I could never "love" our next "new" house; that nothing we would find would measure up to our first Alaska home. And I had grieved over this. But was willing to live with it. I figured it was the next step in my spiritual evolution.

But now - I wonder - could it be possible? To "love" again? Perhaps. Perhaps.

If you remember, say a prayer for us: that God would keep His hand on us during this crazy time. That if this new house isn't "The One", that I won't collapse; that my hope will remain centered on Him who cares little where I live; but rather, how I love.

Psalm 121
A song of ascents.

I lift up my eyes to the hills—

where does my help come from?
My help comes from the LORD,

the Maker of heaven and earth.
He will not let your foot slip—

he who watches over you will not slumber;
indeed, he who watches over Israel

will neither slumber nor sleep.
The LORD watches over you—

the LORD is your shade at your right hand;
the sun will not harm you by day,

nor the moon by night.
The LORD will keep you from all harm—

he will watch over your life;
the LORD will watch over your coming and going

both now and forevermore.