There's more to the story of finding and moving into my forever home that I want to tell you.
Of course, my real forever home is heaven and that's not here yet, so this forever home in Arizona is really my pre-forever home, my rest-of-my-life here in Arizona home.
I have known for a long time that Arizona is where I wanted to settle and live for the rest of my days. I loved living in the neighborhood in Surprise where I lived with Mom and Dad for a couple of years and dreamed of settling in a condo in that neighborhood, close to them and surrounded by people I already knew. But the age qualification in Sun Village is 55 and I'm not there yet and knew I was ready to get settled on my own before I'd get there. We petitioned the condo board to ask for special permission for me to live independently in the community, but were denied. Several neighbors suggested we go ahead anyway, but that's a hefty investment to risk, so we decided to accept their ruling and look elsewhere and for me to rent this apartment in the meantime.
We discovered another age-qualified community not too far away and began looking at the different kinds of homes in the community. Westbrook Village has an age qualification of "40plus" so I definitely qualify. The neighborhood includes a variety of single-family homes, high-rise condos and attached patio homes.
We immediately crossed single-family homes off the list because of the maintenance and the condos have an apartment feel with underground parking instead of a garage, so those were off the list too. A bunch of the patio homes have low ceilings and only a single-car garage, so we crossed those off too. Dad identified the sub-communities that remained and set up searches on Zillow to notify us when houses went on the market. We went to a couple of open houses and drove around a lot without finding anything that felt just right. Meanwhile, prices increased and inventory dropped and I was very content here in my little apartment. We picked a favorite floorpan, identified specific homes and wrote letters to the owners to inquire if they were interested in selling. We looked at one that seemed like it might work, made an offer and were rejected. The house needed quite a bit of expensive updating--floors, bathrooms, kitchen--so we accepted that it wasn't meant to be and moved on, trusting that God would work it out in his perfect timing.
On Good Friday, I received an email from Zillow while I was at Mom and Dad's on a house that looked promising. The price, location and updating that had been done all looked great. Mom and Dad made an appointment to go see it while I went to my therapy appointments that afternoon. I then met the realtor the next morning to see it for myself after they gave it their thumbs up. On my way out the door, the realtor mentioned that there were 20 more showings scheduled that afternoon. I told Dad about the showings and that I liked it a lot and he immediately called to say we would make an offer. We wrote letters to the seller to include with the offer for her to review when she got back into town on Sunday evening and prayed for God's will to be done (the prayer that never fails according to Mitford's Father Timothy!) On Monday morning, we got a call that the seller accepted our offer! The closing is this Friday, the seller is staying until the end of May, and I move in on June 1. I don't know for sure, but I suspect that ours wasn't the only offer and I'm looking forward to the parts of the story we haven't heard someday.
We are all super excited and crazy thankful, praising God every chance we get because it's so clearly his doing!
I will live in it, but it is God's house and I am looking forward to seeing how he will use it for good and his glory.
I love a good God story where you can see clearly that he was definitely at work for "our" good. Thank you for sharing this with us.
Posted by: Sharon | April 27, 2021 at 10:15 AM
GOD is Good!! HE will supply our needs. Even some of our wants if HE so chooses.
Posted by: Charlotte Moore | April 27, 2021 at 07:23 PM
Oh, Joanne! How wonderful!!!
Posted by: Maribeth J McEwan | April 28, 2021 at 04:48 PM
Go God!!!
Posted by: Kim Feth | May 01, 2021 at 11:54 AM
I have followed you since your stroke and this is such good news. You have come so far...and God is so good. Congratulations on your new home.
Posted by: Merla | May 05, 2021 at 08:09 AM