The letter through the door

Sometimes unexpected things happen. You know the sort of thing that stops you in your tracks, takes you by surprise, couldn't have predicted and definitely weren't expecting?

In March 2017, something unexpected happened to us.

We were, by now, enjoying the thought of how God had called us to move to London in Summer 2018. We had told our parents, shared it with some more friends and told our church leaders. We had chatted further with Stef and agreed that there was no urgency in discussing anything as we were a year and a half away from moving. We had a very long run up with plenty of time for God to answer all of the impossible prayers.

At the beginning of March, we had a North Norfolk Cluster church event, where three churches joined together for a weekend. I have to admit that I had a real 'wobble' on the Saturday. I was suddenly overwhelmed with a feeling of 'I can't do this' and I cried a lot on my friend's shoulder! I think I was just feeling unsettled - a lot of what was being said at this church weekend was future vision stuff for the three churches and I just sat there thinking, we won't be here.

Anyway, on with the unexpected thing. We got home on the Saturday evening, all bundled through the door, kids dumping their stuff everywhere and then we noticed a piece of paper had been stuffed through our letterbox. We stood on the doormat and read it together. This is what it said;

Hi there,

My wife and I are looking for a new home. We have grown up around the area and have always felt that your home would be a dream home for us to raise our family. We appreciate you are not selling your home but on the off chance you were thinking about it we wanted to let you know that we are in a position to buy and also give flexibility on time. If you are not looking to move, we appreciate you taking the time to read this and we know that we have at least tried.

Kindest regards

They signed their names at the bottom, (we'll call them B&E) and included their phone numbers.

Well, we all stood there a little dumbfounded for a minute and then Jemimah said quite out of the blue; 'oh these people need our house, that means we can move to London...'

I was confused, bemused and other similar words! Was it a scam (such a British response!!) of some kind? But where was the scam? I texted a few local friends to see if they had also received a letter and each one replied with a 'no.' I mentioned in an earlier blog post my tendency to overthink things and this was one such occasion. Tim is a very patient man! I talked myself into phoning this couple and then decided against it and then changed my mind again and again. This went on for two weeks!! I know how ridiculous I am, really I do. I just kept playing out the conversation in my head and thinking how can we explain OUR situation to them....we can't afford to move to London, etc.

But one Tuesday morning in the middle of March I decided I could do it! So I figured I'd call their home number - they were bound to both be out at work and I could leave a message and not actually have to talk to anyone. Perfect. So I called and E answered on the second ring. Oh flip. I explained that we had received their note and that I wanted to check that it was real, etc. E told me that they already had a buyer for their house so I said that maybe the timing wouldn't work as we were planning to move in 2018. However, she said that if they loved our house, they would be prepared to make arrangements to wait for us to move. (Really?!!) So, we agreed that B&E could come and look round our house the following Saturday.

Now, let's just take stock for a moment. Someone we do not know put a note through our door asking if we would sell our house to them. Unbeknown to them, we know that we will be moving house. This was very unexpected. Sometimes unexpected things happen and you have to take notice of them.

Back to my overthinking of things...all manner of thoughts were now running through my head. What on earth are we going to say to B&E? How do we explain our situation? God, do you really want us to sell our house without being able to afford to buy one in London? Being a grown up really sucks at times.

Let me tell you what happened when B&E came round to see our house. Amazingly, all three of our kids had different things on that morning so it was just Tim and I at home. Even more amazing was how tidy our house was! So, they come round and we all acknowledge just how weird this whole thing is, we do the estate agent bit and show them the house. And they love it. Really, really love it. We explain to them that our reason for moving in 2018 is because it's a natural break in our children's schooling; Esther starts year 9, Eli goes up to High School and Jemimah goes up to Junior School.

And then B makes us an offer. He says;

'How would you feel if we bought your house off you now and then you rented back from us for a year until you were ready to move?'

Sorry, what?! As if this story couldn't get any weirder. We had not considered that at all. We agreed that we would think about it, said goodbye to them and sat at our dining table feeling very confused. This whole letter through the door thing had all the hallmarks of something God-ordained and yet we weren't sure how B's offer fitted - the figures didn't really add up for us to rent from them, so what was God saying to us?

Next blog post: The changing of the lens