Home Is Where the Heart Is
The idea of owning our own home seemed like a distant dream, and initially I didn’t think that there was any hurry. I had been a graduate student in Ireland, and my Irish wife, Margaret, got pregnant right away. We came back to the States and briefly lived with my parents as I looked for some type of writing or communications job. I found a low-paying job through a government grant with the American Heart Association as their public relations person.
After our adorable baby Rosheen was born, it was time to move out of my parents’ beautiful home in a posh suburb and find a humble place of our own.
I had high expectations, but very little money. Margaret was happy to simply find a place within our meager budget and begin the nesting process. We settled on a small one-bedroom apartment that was cozy enough for the three of us. But as time went by, we were expecting another baby and wondering how that would work with an apartment that had a postage-stamp-size kitchen, a bathroom that seemed about the size of a phone booth, and a bedroom that resembled an oversized walk-in closet.
Our apartment was on the second floor and had a stairway down to the entrance. We put up a gate to prevent our daughter from falling down the stairs. But it only took one moment of forgetfulness, and I watched in horror as she spilled down the stairs, feet entangled in her walker.
Plus, the neighborhood residents were having their own struggles a bit too close to home. The guy whose window we could look directly into from ours stuck his head in an oven after an altercation with his girlfriend. I could hear it unfold. It was time to consider moving.
Then it happened. My parents were casually looking around for something larger to encompass our growing family. They landed on what seemed to be a bonanza—a brand-new housing development was going up with reasonable prices. I smiled as I thought about my own little plot of land and no cockroaches in the kitchen.
All of us took off on the weekend to see this smallish colonial. In my mind, nothing is quite like the excitement of new construction and watching homes going up with all new neighbors. I had experienced this three times in my own childhood when my parents built brand-new homes.
As we asked the realtor questions and toured the home, I felt like it was too good to be true. The finances just barely worked, but this was in a time when home values were escalating and, according to my parents, it would be a good investment. The only downside appeared to be a dilapidated barn with a couple of old wrecked cars right behind what would be our backyard. Views and trees really appeal to me, but I thought I shouldn’t expect too much and be content with this superb gift. Then, just as we were ready to leave, Rosheen fell down the stairs of the new home. We had been praying fervently for confirmation on our way to the house. Was this a negative sign?
When we came back to our little mole hole, we continued to pray. As a typical man, I was listing the facts, confident that my bride would see common sense and would also love a bigger home to take care of and decorate. But to my chagrin, she blurted out that she didn’t have peace about it from the Lord. I was a bit shocked and asked her reasons. She said she had none but the intuitive check that we can sometimes get from the Holy Spirit. To my credit, I had to check my heart and seek out my own motivations before trying to pressure her with facts. What could possibly be wrong with a home that we could afford and that would be a good investment, especially with the prediction that mortgage interest rates would continue to go up?
Fortunately, I had learned a good bit from marriage conferences, books, and some other couples married longer than we were at the time. If you have a godly wife and after prayer on a certain issue you don’t have peace or you are not in agreement, then don’t move forward. She wouldn’t budge because she didn’t want to violate what she sensed the Lord was telling her. It was clear that we were being tested. It wasn’t necessarily wrong to buy this house, but would we be willing to obey God for what He ultimately had planned for us? So we made the decision to pass it up, and we could find nothing else like it on the market.
Over the ensuing couple of years, interest rates did indeed climb, but so did my salary with a new high-profile job in New York City, and we were able to increase our savings. Our apartment began to feel like a sardine can when our son Brendan arrived, and then later a relative with her new baby for six months, to make a total of six sardines! But God was teaching us about sharing with others, learning to live on less, and putting Him above earthly desires. In fact, we put the goal of a new house completely out of our minds, and asked God, when He was ready, to just give us a sign to pursue a change in our living situation.
One of our clients in a nearby tree-lined and more rural suburb had me come out for a visit. On my way back, I passed a sign saying NEW HOUSES FOR SALE. I cruised down the street, passing houses being constructed, to a dead end where there was an empty lot. As I surveyed the beautiful woods on three sides, I wondered why this lot was one of the last available and wished the fortunate person well. On my way out, I stopped off at the builder’s model home. He conveyed to me that the reason the lot was available was that the original owner’s financing had fallen through at the last moment. What was really interesting was that this builder was the same one who built the home we had decided not to buy two years earlier because of our discernment in prayer.
I drove home at the speed of light and grabbed a hold of Margaret; we drove back to talk to the builder in greater detail. It turns out that he could put the exact same model that we had previously turned down on this prime lot. It would take him six months to build, and because of my improved salary, we could save more for a down payment on what had become a slightly more expensive home. We had the additional perk, with new construction, of weekly watching our home ascend to the sky. And because of the location, we didn’t have to forego the joy of the trees or deal with the eyesore of rusted-out cars behind our backyard.
It was as if God introduced what was ideal for us at the time but was testing our hearts in terms of not getting ahead of His will. After we moved in, we realized that because of the cul-de-sac and no house across the street, our young children were able to play in the street in front of our yard without worry. Not so at the previous house two miles away. We were able to walk behind our backyard and follow a long path between the trees in solitude when we wanted to pray or think through a decision. Not so, again, with the first home two years previous.
Whenever we think back thirty-five years upon the joy of entering that house after waiting so long, and all the wonderful memories that ensued with our children, we ask ourselves: “Would we rather have lived in the first house with its downsides for eleven years? Or waited as we did for the additional blessings and the nine years we had at the second house?” The answer is always the same, and we praise God all over again for the house at 30 Pierson Drive.
Home is indeed where the heart is, and we’ll find it by seeking the Lord’s will and timetable and making sure He is first in our hearts.