I have really been surprised at how emotionally and mentally (and even spiritually) taxing it is to purchase a home.
Did I mention our offer was accepted? Yep, we are under contract now for a beautiful little home in Dublin. It is perfect in so many ways! I am THRILLED to have this property as MY home, I mean, how lucky are we to live in such a home for 5 years!?!? So why am I dimming this joyful success with worry? Let me tell you a little secret...big decisions cause me worry. I thought that once we found a great one that we loved and got through the process of making an offer the work would be mostly over. But the stress was only PARTIALLY due to 'are they going to accept our offer' and 'will they go with the other bid?' and 'did we bid too much or too little?' blah blah blah.
Actually, the bigger stress has been internal, stress over the commitment to such a substantial purchase. We are NOT quick decision-makers and prefer to mull things over for a long time. You know, go back and forth and back and forth for weeks and weeks and MAYBE finally come to a decision. (Though often our decisions are made FOR us because we waited too long, lol). Maybe that is why this process has been so challenging: we had to make decisions quickly. Like, in a matter of hours. And while we feel confident and happy about the choice we made, there is still that anxiety, that voice saying "slow down slow down I can't process this quickly"... resulting in a profound stress that basically means nothing. Because if I take a step back and logically assess what I'm worried about, I can see that everything is fine and I don't need to be concerned about those things. I should just have confidence in the spiritual assurance we felt when we made the decision. But see, this is the trouble I ALWAYS have with getting answers to prayers: I can't distinguish between the absence of comfort that would be the
spirit indicating it ISN'T the right decision and the absence of comfort that would be MY worry-wart personality. Did you know that I worried non-stop about being engaged to Eric? Yeah, I went back and forth between anxiety and bliss for months. I almost backed out 3 or 4 times and caused Eric some major stress too. And for what? Absolutely nothing. Because being married to him has by far been the best choice of my entire life and I'm superbly happy in my marriage! I just have problems with decisions. Just to illustrate my anxiety over big commitments. :)
Peace is the key to knowing I've made the right choice... and this house-buying process is so crazy and full of stress because of the huge sums of money we're talking about... that peace is fleeting. So right now I'm just trying to grasp onto the peace I felt while praying. Because otherwise, I'm just nervous.
and excited! I mean--HELLO--our offer was accepted and we're getting a dream first home!
but nervous too. :)
You probably don't recall that I made Gwen an adorable monkey cake for her first birthday, a customized blue Aurora cake for her second birthday, and a detailed Thomas cake for her third birthday. In comparison, I felt like Caroline's rubber ducky on top of simple buttercream icing cake was totally a cop out. A part of me feels guilty about gypping Caroline out of a better cake... but the rest of me says, you know, sometimes you just have to be realistic about what can get accomplished in a 24 hour period. Sanity trumps decoration every time. And with Easter and finals competing during her birthday week, we made compromises. So, a simple, basic cake for the girl (not that she minded). Just don't look too closely at the icing job. :) She certainly didn't! Gwen was fastidious about her first bday cake, but Caroline eagerly dived right in to that icing! She loved it!
