Blindsided By God's Amazing Goodness!

When we left our beautiful acreage 3.5 years ago, my heart was broken.

We had originally moved from a suburban home to the country, so that we could ‘raise our boys in the country’, as my old blog used to be called. For seven wonderful years, we enjoyed glorious flower-filled meadows in the summer, gorgeous hues of brown, tans, and greens in the autumn, and a winter wonderland in the snow. Our children learned to ski on our gentle slopes, and enjoyed a 500 foot luge that their daddy groomed every winter.

The View From Our Back Veranda

Our Little House in the Big Woods

We made that move because it was in the best interest of our oldest son and my husband. For Ray it meant being closer to work opportunities, and for our son, he would be able to be more involved in town functions.

But I knew that my little ones would never know the freedom of running through fields of long grass with daisies and wild flowers swaying in the breeze. They wouldn't have the joy of rambling through the bushes picking berries. They would never know what it was to pretend to be Tom Sawyer, while floating a boat in our marsh. I cried silent tears into my pillow late at night when all were asleep. I didn't want them to know how sad it made me.

Running Free in Our "Back Yard"

The Summer View From Our Back Deck

Including the Marsh the Boys Boated On

It was however, something that I needed to do. I really felt that we were being called and so, in obedience, I stepped out in faith. I knew that God would never leave me nor forsake me, and honestly, it didn’t take long for me to begin to enjoy the benefits of living 10 minutes from town.

It did take me a while, though, to stop feeling like a goldfish in a goldfish bowl. After a while, I began forgetting the neighbour that liked to sit on his lawnchair watching us as we worked in our yard *smile*. I began not worrying about the neighbours wondering why I was out in the yard in my pajamas. Hey, if they wanted to look, let them!

About six months after we moved in Ray built us a very safe six foot privacy fence. I now had my own little sanctuary. I was content.

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It is really mysterious how God works. He knows the deepest longings and desires of our hearts, and He is so faithful to reward our faithfulness and obedience. God is so amazingly good! I said I was content in my home. I was.

At least I thought I was!

But perhaps God knew what had buried itself down deep below the surface. Something I thought was gone.

One day, Ray told me he was building a house for a real estate agent. He had built for them once before five years earlier, and they had recently sold this house and were rebuilding. He told me they had bought 80 acres. When I heard this, I thought how nice that sounded. Also, to boot, it was closer to town than we were! What chance of finding a piece of land closer to town! Goodness! Our other house was 45 minutes from town. I asked what they paid and was surprised. It didn’t sound too bad, but was more than we could afford. Not that we were looking!...

Shortly after this, in a very coincidental situation, I ran into a woman and she ‘happened to mention’ that she and her family had just bought a huge acreage in a similar vicinity to where the other people had bought. A few miles apart, but still - *near town!*

My reaction? It surprised me, as I looked back at it in hindsight. I was very oohing and ahhing at it. I had no idea that I had such a longing locked up inside me. However, apparently I did!

I left that day thinking about these two families that would have the blessing of raising their children on acreage. When I went home, I spontaneously said to Ray, “If you will buy me a hundred acres I will sell this house.”

Ray would *never* expect me to say this as knew there was no moving me. He is always making noises of selling our home and rebuilding. All about profit. But as I keep telling him, I am a mother and it is all about roots and a home to me. I am not moving. I am sick of building. I am done. (Ha, says Denise and Renee! grin)

Well, he was surprised I would say such a thing. He put out his hand to seal a deal, (not one to lose an opportunity that wasn't likely to arise again!), and his eyes registered shock when I actually reached out and shook his hand. He then said, "Well, it doesn’t have to be one hundred does it?"

I replied, "I want 100 acres, but no less than 40." I was throwing out this number simply because - hey! If I was going for the big one, I was going for the big one! If God had a plan, He could make it work. Do you have any clue how much 100 acres would cost?

He looked at me skeptically, as if he figured, No chance.

That was the end of that discussion. Wow! What was I thinking and saying??

This conversation was left alone and we didn’t discuss it any further. One day, about a week later, as I was driving to a town about an hour from us, I saw a sign that I hadn’t seen before. It was for acreage of 160-800 acres. I decided to take a drive through and see what I could find. The long and short of it was – it was nice, but too far from where we presently lived, and honestly, too expensive.

During the course of the previous week or so, many different feelings had come up. Strong feelings against moving because my beautiful home was not even totally finished and I loved it!! It is a gorgeous house with unique special features, and I had to work hard to get Ray to finish all that is done! He is a hard worker, but there are only so many hours in a week.

As time went by, I knew it was going to take a miracle to find property that would satisfy what both Ray and I wanted: no more than 10 minutes north or south of our town, and not east or west. My children were not going to lose their friends, as that was of utmost importance to me, and Ray had to be near town for work, plus Ray and I have friends we gather with a couple times a week, and I was not going to lose out on that, plus of course, our church is here.

Therefore, that didn’t give us a very big area to find a reasonably priced piece of land in. Actually, it was nearly impossible, as I already knew because I had gone on the internet and there were only three pieces of land available in my choice area! Two of these were above our price range. Not that we really had a price range! LOL!

Late on night, I went on the internet and did a search. I didn’t tell Ray I was doing this, as I didn’t want to get him too interested, because honestly, I did not want to move. *laugh* That probably doesn’t make sense, since it sounds like I was the interested one. I was really stepping out in obedience when I felt these old desires resurfacing. I thought I might have been getting a nudge from God, and so I just took the steps that were obviously next.

I believe in being obedient when I feel that God is impressing on me to do something. I know in the end I will be happy I do. In addition, if it is God He will work out the details. Therefore, there is no harm in doing the research, as my prayer is always that He open or shut the doors accordingly. Actually my prayer was that he would SLAM the door shut if it was not meant to be.

That evening I found a property a third property. It was cheaper than the rest (ridiculously so), and through the course of a few emails, I discovered it was in the same vicinity of the other acreages I had heard sold recently. It had a pond and was nearly 170 acres in size. There was meadowland and forest, and a beautiful view of a distant large lake. There was however, an offer on the land.

We sat on the information for a while (after I told Ray), and then one day, while I was thinking that this was all a bad idea because I didn’t want to lose my beautiful home, I suddenly had a thought: I would rebuild the same house! I didn’t need to lose my home. *smile*

One day, Ray asks me, So if we were to build again, would you want to build the same house?

I adamantly replied, Yes!

We went out to see the land and both of us really liked it. We went and took another look at it and felt we might like to make an offer. Our realtor was leaving the following day for Australia for six weeks, so that put a little pressure on us. Ray had an idea of a bid and I felt we should offer $6,000 less than he said. I felt we should hit them low. He agreed. We put in our offer and the people countered by dropping a few thousand from their asking price.

Ray and I agreed on a firm final offer – merely a few thousand more. This would be our first test to see if God wanted us to have the land, we would get it for cheap. It took them 36 hours to come back and accept our price. During this time, I was having a variety of feelings – ups and downs. As it ended up the people dropped their price hugely and we barely budged. We got a remarkable price.

When we heard they accepted it was quite exciting, but I didn't let myself get too excited, because it was really just the beginning. Now we had to get the financing and sell our house.

Miracle of miracles, we got our financing arranged in a matter of days. Short of writing pages of details, which I don’t want to do, just let me tell you, we got a strong Word to go in a direction of financing we had never done before.

Here is an example:

I opened both my devotions books on October 30 and they both were headed: FAITH and the other one was GROW FAITH.

One had an opening verse: "He who trusts in me shall possess the land and inherit my Holy Mountain." Isaiah 57:13

The other one spoke of taking risks. Well, the financing angle that Ray wanted to take was one that I wouldn't have done. It was perfectly 'fine', but not the conventional way I would have done it. I got some more pretty clear words that showed me I was to agree to it. I did.

We were approved within five days and we didn’t even have to sell our house!

We headed out to the land with a well witcher one evening. This man had witched our last house and had been accurate with our water source – right down to the exact foot – so we wanted to try him. We found grade A quality water, with a running stream of water 92 feet below the surface, putting out 8-10 gallons a minute. We actually found more sources of water, but this one was in the area we want to build. When we take the well driller out there we sure hope that our witcher was accurate!

This is driving onto the land. We own everything you see, including the forest in the distance, plus the pond in the foreground.


This is as you continue heading into the property. The road leads to the right and when you follow it you will end up in a large meadow. That is where you will look *back to* when you see the following pictures.


Looking right behind the truck is where the one side of the house view will go. It is a huge meadow. It was actually logged a few years ago, and they have left it pretty tidy. It will need some work tidying it up.


This is the other side of the truck showing the rest of the opening. You can see how the road/driveway will come from over at the far side of the picture. The little sandy looking spot near the right is where the road will head. You can imagine the wildflowers here in the summer! I didn't take a picture of it, but on the other direction you will see a distant view of a lake. It is also quite beautiful as it looks down into a valley.


These following pictures are taken in four directions.

There is a railroad that runs through the property. You can see the dark line in the picture above. Apparently it is quiet and only runs through twice a day. There is a low rumbling as it passes through. As soon as I saw the railroad I thought of the E. Nesbit book "The Railway Children". I can just see my children standing out there waving a white cloth at the engineer as he passes by daily! Oh the joyful adventures they will have!! When Austin heard there was a railroad he said, "Adventures!" Colt tells me the Railway Children was one of his favourite books.

I have an interesting story to tell about that book. When I was 13 years old I was electrocuted on an electric train track in England. I was a romantic child and I was always open to adventure. One day, my 14 year old brother and I scaled a fence and climbed down the embankment to the train track. We walked along the rails and enjoyed our independence. Our mother was in Canada, as she had still not emigrated back to England ( I was born there), and my father was out looking for work. Because I was not raised in England, I was not aware that the train tracks were electric and not coal or steam or whatever powers trains!

I decided to do one of the things I had read about in the book. I knelt down by the track and then put both hands down on the track and lowered my head to listen for the coming train. I don't even remember making contact with the track before I was flying back through the air from the force of the electrocution. My hands were burned and I was screaming. I was absolutely terrified! My poor brother had no clue what was wrong, as I just kept screaming. I thought I was going to die. To this day, I have no clue the amount of electricity that runs through an electric railway. I would love to know. I have been told that I should have been killed by this power, but yet I wasn't.

For weeks after this event, (which I didn't tell my parents about) I was terrified that I would yet die. Each night I would pray that I would wake in the morning.

So how's that for a memory of one of my favourite books! LOL!!

It's really quite remarkable that as far as the eye can see this is all ours!! How amazing is our God!!!! And just think - four short weeks ago, we had NO CLUE we would be moving and with VERY LITTLE effort on our part, it all came together. No stressing. Just walking in faith and opening doors and being at rest if they stayed open or slammed shut.

Two days ago, we put our house on the market. We received the keys and will be heading out to *our land* this week. Ray will begin figuring out the hydro poles and the well. Our goal is to sell our house, but that is one area I have no idea how it ‘should’ work out. I am leaving that to God.

If we sell now then we will be homeless until June, when we could move onto our land in our trailer. But last time we sold we sold in early February and didn’t have to move until the end of May. That was perfect as a brand new rental house became available on that very day, and we moved right into it (one block from the house we were building). So I know God has all the details worked out.

In the meanwhile, I am still reeling to know that we have bought this fantastic acreage, have approved financing, will be rebuilding our house with a few wonderful improvements, plus are making plans for a whole lot more excitement. (to be posted about later)

I should mention that when I presented this idea to Ray it was for *one reason only* and I made sure he was in agreement before we proceeded. We had had land before and because of the ages of our kids they had not been able to utilize the land fully. They were too young to hunt and we didn’t have the finances for buying snow mobiles or motor bikes. I told Ray that I was finding our very boyish boys were really feeling the crush of living in a town – nowhere to play Airsoft without offending neighbours, plus nowhere to ride dirt bikes etc. Our friends boys all hunt and Ray doesn’t. This doesn’t mean our boys can’t hunt, though. It simply means that we need to buy land where our boys can go hunting without their dad if that is their desire. The older ones are old enough.

So now the adventure begins.

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