Let God Choose Your House (2)

So we moved to a bigger house in a nicer area. It was a really nice property, with a mock Tudor front and a long garden with good trees. It was a short walk from the park, a short walk from church (which meant we were able to care for someone’s autistic child while they went to church occasionally), a reasonable walk to the kid’s school, and a short walk to either of the hospitals.

We didn’t know when we moved there that my wife was about to develop rheumatoid arthritis and need a lot of hospital visits – it was a very convenient location.

It was good to have the extra space as well – at our old house our fifth child had been sleeping in a cot in the entrance hall! Now they each had a room to themselves! Later, since the girls were good friends, we put them in a shared room and converted the small bedroom to a computer room.

We enjoyed a fantastic view of the garden from the lounge french window. We were visited by frogs, wood pigeons, and a whole range of birds. The kitchen was antique, with all hand made work tops, cupboards and drawers. There was a cast iron range, and various original 1930s features.

How we praise God!

But, as I said in the last post – you can’t run away from problems. Damp started to show in the loft extension where the boys were sleeping, But our neighbour was the great test to our patience. He would complain if our children raised their voices above a whisper (his swearing loudly at his wife was different, of course!), he blamed all wind damage on their games, would not let us come and go without wanting to know where we had been, and so on. He complained if we had lights on at night. He would stand in his side passage and talk loudly ‘to his wife’ but so that we could hear, about all these terrible things we were doing. More importantly, he would harass our guests if they parked on the street outside. If they parked in front of his house, there would be a really big row. This terminated our plans to hold house group meetings in the house. Now a casual reader might think that he was right and that we were the problem. But the man was notorious for this behaviour throughout the street.

New baby - time to move to a bigger house again. This time we sold within a year, although not without trials as I shall tell in my next bulletin. But I have just to comment that we lost two sales and several viewings owing to the neighbour complaining to the potential buyers ‘loitering’ while the looked at our house with their car parked nearby.

So why do we keep letting God choose our house? Because although I am moaning about the problems, the houses were actually very good in many ways and we had happy times there and met the people God had appointed us to meet. There was also progress – each house was better than the last. But all this has really been building up to the next house, which I am still in, and very happy. Read on in the next post!