Quarry Truck-loads of Leadings and Blessings
Have you ever seen a picture of one of those huge rock quarry trucks? You probably wouldn't think anything of it at first glance, or even notice the monstrous size of the truck, without some frame of reference included in the shot. Usually, this is a full grown man standing in front of the wheel, and he doesn't reach even halfway up. Then you can look at the rest of the truck and it's surroundings and realize just how monstrous it is.
There's also the borderline-inappropriate photo of a guy's hairy kneepit, that, when zoomed in, looks very much like something else. But if you zoom out and see the hemline of the shorts, the ankle, and the floor in the background, you relieve the viewer of potential subsequent nightmares.
Anyway, much the same is how we view our circumstances.
On one hand, if we view our circumstances in light of the 80-90 years we might have to live on this earth, we can quickly get stressed, anxious, depressed, and even become existentialist.
On the other hand, if we view EVERYTHING we live through and experience in light of ETERNITY, our struggles and hardships, calamities, and persecutions become nearly inconsequential. (I say "nearly" because what we do here is still very important.)
In light of eternity is how we strive to view everything in this household, including our current - very dynamically-changing - circumstances.
We had a comfortable, "secure" life when Randy worked at camp and made more than we needed (haha! which was well below the poverty line!).
God told him when to leave, and he did mechanic work and started in the bike direction.
He made a couple Teamcycles (kinda shabby compared to what he makes now) and we even had them in some parades 2 summers ago.
The year following the parades, Randy started an official LLC and made a few more custom bikes for people, as well as more Teamcycles to rent. The next fall, he got a call from a reporter whose boss had come across Randy's business card (from a parade) and remembered Randy and wanted to do a story on him! So, a glowing article was published in the June/July 2018 issue of Lake Country Journal Magazine! We just couldn't think this stuff up even if we had tried! (Since the article was published, Randy made a Teamcycle sale to a guy in OHIO, and we were paid to deliver it, visiting my parents along the way and getting 1.5 days away from the kids. Bonus!) If we had a reporter come to us immediately following the parades that summer, Randy would have had very little to show or tell. God's perfect timing!
We kept getting "pushed" in the bike direction and looked for another house with a shop for Randy, not finding anything suitable and affordable (this was spring 2017). We "randomly" thought of our friends' land and sent them a text, asking if they'd consider selling us some of it. They had just put a portion of it on Craigslist the day before. We bought it, the perfect location for having a bike business (except that it's Pine River... and new businesses do not do very well in PR) close to the paved bike trail and outside city limits, our preference. There's a few solid, clean acres for building, but most of the land is CRAP, full of deep sawdust patches, car parts, rusty old saw blades, and lots of garbage. Foolish? We wonder at times, but no. Planned. And we'll never lack for something to do so long as we own the land!
We started building a pole barn this spring for Randy's storage and work shop on the land (after receiving our permit about a month earlier than expected), and we were both inspired - separately and together - to try selling our house this summer for what we thought would be a high price (compared to the appraisal we had 2 years before) as a sort of "fleece" to test whether this was really the direction God wanted us to go. We found out that the price we had decided on, separately and together, was dead-center of the appraisal range this year, not high like we had thought. We didn't raise the selling price. Foolish? No, planned.
We did the (exhausting) work of de-cluttering, re-arranging, organizing, and cleaning to make the house look like no one lives here while 5 of us live here. 1 hour after it was on the market on Wednesday, I got a request for a showing (from another broker). We accepted the appointment, brought our dog on a grocery run to Brainerd during that time, and while we were gone they requested to change it to the next afternoon. We accepted THAT showing request and it was later that night (Thursday) that we received a full-price offer, contingent on the sale of buyer's home. After requesting through our agent that the buyers get a bridge loan rather than have the contingency, the buyers visited their bank that day (Friday) and got pre-approved for a bridge loan and sent us a new offer, full-price, without any contingencies besides inspections. We waited until the open house was done on Saturday before signing the purchase agreement (NO ONE came to the open house, which was odd).
The home inspection went so well: the only thing the buyers requested is that CO detectors were installed by the bedrooms. Done! The septic and well inspections passed, so we're officially in the clear for a closing date of Sept 28!
One night a couple weeks later, our agent stopped by and mentioned how amazed she was that we hadn't had any more showings (besides the buyers and one other showing the Sunday after we signed the purchase agreement). I thought maybe there would be something written in our listing that would tell brokers that we had signed a purchase agreement and she said NO, it's just a new, active listing! After the work of showing the house just TWICE and then signing a purchase agreement, I had been hoping and praying that no one else would want to see the house, because it's a LOT of work! God is good! We've been able to focus our energies on other things!
So now the pole barn project has turned into our future temporary living quarters, but we don't have enough time to get it done before Sept 28. Our friends in a nearby town have a MIL apartment attached to their house, and their renters just recently moved out. They have offered us the space for as long as we need!
We also had a moving sale last weekend, and WAY MORE of our stuff walked away than we thought would go! Pretty much all the furniture that wouldn't fit in the pole barn with us is gone!
So many other details have lined up beyond our control that I can't remember right now. I just had to get some of the big ones written down!
There's also the borderline-inappropriate photo of a guy's hairy kneepit, that, when zoomed in, looks very much like something else. But if you zoom out and see the hemline of the shorts, the ankle, and the floor in the background, you relieve the viewer of potential subsequent nightmares.
Anyway, much the same is how we view our circumstances.
On one hand, if we view our circumstances in light of the 80-90 years we might have to live on this earth, we can quickly get stressed, anxious, depressed, and even become existentialist.
On the other hand, if we view EVERYTHING we live through and experience in light of ETERNITY, our struggles and hardships, calamities, and persecutions become nearly inconsequential. (I say "nearly" because what we do here is still very important.)
In light of eternity is how we strive to view everything in this household, including our current - very dynamically-changing - circumstances.
We had a comfortable, "secure" life when Randy worked at camp and made more than we needed (haha! which was well below the poverty line!).
God told him when to leave, and he did mechanic work and started in the bike direction.
He made a couple Teamcycles (kinda shabby compared to what he makes now) and we even had them in some parades 2 summers ago.
The year following the parades, Randy started an official LLC and made a few more custom bikes for people, as well as more Teamcycles to rent. The next fall, he got a call from a reporter whose boss had come across Randy's business card (from a parade) and remembered Randy and wanted to do a story on him! So, a glowing article was published in the June/July 2018 issue of Lake Country Journal Magazine! We just couldn't think this stuff up even if we had tried! (Since the article was published, Randy made a Teamcycle sale to a guy in OHIO, and we were paid to deliver it, visiting my parents along the way and getting 1.5 days away from the kids. Bonus!) If we had a reporter come to us immediately following the parades that summer, Randy would have had very little to show or tell. God's perfect timing!
We kept getting "pushed" in the bike direction and looked for another house with a shop for Randy, not finding anything suitable and affordable (this was spring 2017). We "randomly" thought of our friends' land and sent them a text, asking if they'd consider selling us some of it. They had just put a portion of it on Craigslist the day before. We bought it, the perfect location for having a bike business (except that it's Pine River... and new businesses do not do very well in PR) close to the paved bike trail and outside city limits, our preference. There's a few solid, clean acres for building, but most of the land is CRAP, full of deep sawdust patches, car parts, rusty old saw blades, and lots of garbage. Foolish? We wonder at times, but no. Planned. And we'll never lack for something to do so long as we own the land!
We started building a pole barn this spring for Randy's storage and work shop on the land (after receiving our permit about a month earlier than expected), and we were both inspired - separately and together - to try selling our house this summer for what we thought would be a high price (compared to the appraisal we had 2 years before) as a sort of "fleece" to test whether this was really the direction God wanted us to go. We found out that the price we had decided on, separately and together, was dead-center of the appraisal range this year, not high like we had thought. We didn't raise the selling price. Foolish? No, planned.
We did the (exhausting) work of de-cluttering, re-arranging, organizing, and cleaning to make the house look like no one lives here while 5 of us live here. 1 hour after it was on the market on Wednesday, I got a request for a showing (from another broker). We accepted the appointment, brought our dog on a grocery run to Brainerd during that time, and while we were gone they requested to change it to the next afternoon. We accepted THAT showing request and it was later that night (Thursday) that we received a full-price offer, contingent on the sale of buyer's home. After requesting through our agent that the buyers get a bridge loan rather than have the contingency, the buyers visited their bank that day (Friday) and got pre-approved for a bridge loan and sent us a new offer, full-price, without any contingencies besides inspections. We waited until the open house was done on Saturday before signing the purchase agreement (NO ONE came to the open house, which was odd).
The home inspection went so well: the only thing the buyers requested is that CO detectors were installed by the bedrooms. Done! The septic and well inspections passed, so we're officially in the clear for a closing date of Sept 28!
One night a couple weeks later, our agent stopped by and mentioned how amazed she was that we hadn't had any more showings (besides the buyers and one other showing the Sunday after we signed the purchase agreement). I thought maybe there would be something written in our listing that would tell brokers that we had signed a purchase agreement and she said NO, it's just a new, active listing! After the work of showing the house just TWICE and then signing a purchase agreement, I had been hoping and praying that no one else would want to see the house, because it's a LOT of work! God is good! We've been able to focus our energies on other things!
So now the pole barn project has turned into our future temporary living quarters, but we don't have enough time to get it done before Sept 28. Our friends in a nearby town have a MIL apartment attached to their house, and their renters just recently moved out. They have offered us the space for as long as we need!
We also had a moving sale last weekend, and WAY MORE of our stuff walked away than we thought would go! Pretty much all the furniture that wouldn't fit in the pole barn with us is gone!
So many other details have lined up beyond our control that I can't remember right now. I just had to get some of the big ones written down!
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