Welcome home

It's amazing to see how God has brought us this far. Upon leaving Sunnyvale, sad as it was, it was really apparent that God was paving the way for us. It started with Tom's job, just a couple weeks before he was thinking of asking his manager if he can telecommute from Boston, there was reorg done in the company and the opportunity to ask fell right into Tom's lap (with a favorable response). The sale of our house went better than we could have ever asked for and our realtor's advice to sell early really paid off. Now we hear about declining markets, even in the Bay Area, and we feel lucky to have just beaten it.

When we got here, we were pretty much settled on Lexington. The more I spent time here, the more I liked it. But the more we spent time here, the more we'd hear about disgruntled residents, often about the competitive schools. The house hunting, while somewhat fun, wasn't quite working out. We had one offer not accepted and another that we pulled out on due to water problems. On both houses we felt okay about not getting them, feeling like God will take care of us somehow. But there were certainly days that I wondered where our house was going to come from.

And then we expanded our search to Concord, which is 2 towns out. It's quaint, quiet and we bid on a house that we really liked. I was unsure about the quietness and the homogeneity, but on paper, there was much this house offered: cul-de-sac, great house, great school (newly renovated). We put an offer only to find that the sellers wanted a lot more and weren't in a rush to compromise. Fine, we'll wait. Then we put in an offer again when another family put in an offer. We were both rejected! Boy, couldn't say we didn't try!

We were really at a dilemma point. We liked both towns, they both had their pros and cons, neither are perfect. So which to choose? I definitely fel tlike we weren't just buying a house, we were buying a new life for us and our kids, what neighborhood they live in, what kind of school they go to and what kind of friends they have. The stress was a bit unbearable at times. I couldn't quite make a decision so I did the only thing I could do: asked God to make it clear, ask God to decide. In a way, whichever town we get a house in is where we would live and yet, how would we choose which houses to bid on if we couldn't decide on a town?

Then this house came on the market, just at the right time. Because we had already loved Lexington, tried Concord, and were open to either. Maybe had this house come on the market even 1 month earlier (which it would have except the selling dad wanted to do the handyman work himself), we wouldn't have been so sure we wanted to be in Lexington because we were in our "Concord phase" at the time. Had we gotten the first house we bid on, we would have been behind a noisy street instead of the lovely cul-de-sac we're on now. Had the Concord sellers not been so greedy, we'd be in a different town altogether, possibly always wondering if we really belonged. But because things happened in the order and timing that they did, we end up with a house that love in a town that we are really enjoying.

And all those pros and cons? We're trusting that God will help us through those cons and we'll remember to thank him for the pros.