Pro 16:3 Commit thy works unto the LORD, and thy thoughts shall be established.
I didn’t actually jump on calling our realtor. I was so preoccupied with the upcoming baby that I didn’t call the realtor until after Asher was born, and he didn’t arrive until late July. So, it wasn’t until mid-August when I finally contacted her.
During our initial consultation, she walked slowly throughout the house and then preceded to give many instructions. We needed to repaint, redo the flooring, do some landscaping, and have it all complete in a couple of months. She wanted to list it while we were gone for the Feast of Tabernacles in the fall. After she gave us her instructions, she asked us what our plans were. We let her know that we wanted to farm. She seriously thought we were crazy.
She wasn’t being rude, and she wasn’t the first person that questioned our idea. In fact, it seemed that the number that agreed with us was far less than the number that thought we were a little off our rocker.
I don’t know how many times we heard. “Goat farming? Seriously?” or “So, you really don’t want to have a life?” or “You don’t know anything about farming.”
Then, to really get them going, we would let them know that we wanted relatively raw land, mainly because we knew we couldn’t afford land with a house. We wanted to find affordable land of at least 10 acres, then build our house. This idea made some of our family and friends concerned. I realized most of our friends and acquaintances didn’t think we were going to accomplish our goals, and they were afraid we would regret our decision to sell our house. I know that their worry for us was in love; they didn’t want to see us get hurt by our decision.
Needless to say, it was hard to just go out on a limb when the majority consensus was “don’t do this”, but we did have our supporters. Our mothers stood behind us in our decision and a couple of our best friends. This led us to the most important step, we prayed.
Josh and I learned throughout the years of being together that it is smart to pray before doing something, and then trust that no matter what, God will see you through it even if you missed the big STOP signs from Heaven. He can correct any and every mistake we make, but we will have to face the consequences for those mistakes. And we also know that doing the right thing doesn’t keep you from going through trials along the way.
After the realtor left, I took care of the baby, Asher, and Josh got Jazmyn ready for bed. Later that evening, when both children were asleep, we prayed together for God’s guidance in this decision. We also got down to planning how to get everything done. The first thing was just to go ahead and paint the living room. We wouldn’t need to worry about the carpet since we were going to rip that out anyways.
By mid-September, the living room was painted a nice neutral color. The carpet was ripped out and the floors were swept and prepped for the new flooring. I laughed walking around my house thinking that I finally got the new floors I had wanted for the past five years, but now we were putting the house up for sale.
Time seemed to fly by, and before we knew it we had the floors mostly done but not the trim. The living room was a sunken living room, which required a good bit of trim to outline the walls because the carpet had gone up a good six inches on the walls. The only thing is that it was time to go to the Feast. Our realtor let us know not to worry about it being unfinished. She would inform her office to make it clear that we would complete the projects prior to selling. So, we all left to go to our various Feast sites and waited to see what would happen.