house hunting

This weekend Dave and I are heading to Cleveland to hopefully buy a home. This is such a fun, stressful and exciting process! I am tempted to post pictures of some of the homes we’ll be looking at, but I would rather post a picture of the home we’ve (fingers crossed) bought at the end of the weekend! Then you can post comments about how you’ll look forward to visiting me in our new abode and eating pancakes in our breakfast nook.

What makes this especially nice is my parents are watching Reuben so we’re going to take advantage of this time & hit Cleveland’s Little Italy for a night on the town to celebrate our upcoming move. Tonight they came over and prayed with us that God would give us peace, direction and provision for the home he has for us.  A few weeks ago when I was meditating on scripture trying to calm down about all our upcoming life changes I felt like God reminded me of what his provision is like.  I began to think of the home that we are looking for not as something we have to work for or stress out about, but a gift.  It seemed like Jesus was reminding me that just like with Christmas gifts, you don’t stress out about what you’ll get, you simply wait with anticipation and gratitude that people give you gifts.  In the same way, I’ve begun to pray this image for our home- that I would wait with eager anticipation for the gift Jesus has for us in a home.  Though it has been fun to think about new furniture like this:

Or wallpaper like this:

I’ve tried to imagine the people that will fill my home- meals shared together, rejoicing over answered prayers, people coming to visit, and people realizing that Jesus loves them more than they can imagine because of the hospitality they experience.

I’ll look forward to blogging about our house-hunting adventures!