Many people have been asking me why Travis and I decided to move to Orillia, and so I decided to write a blog and share all that has happened in the last few months. I am a woman of detail and though that may annoy some that is just the way I am so I am warning you this is going to be a long story.
It all started back in April when my friend Rachel, another friend and I were out for a walk in Rachel’s neighbourhood. I had been looking around thinking how peaceful and beautiful it was and said “this is a really nice place to live.” Then we saw an amazing house and I joked around and said “That’s where I will live. That is my dream house.” I was totally kidding though. My “dream house” was not one Travis and I would purchase at this time in our lives. After that day Rachel would joke around with me when she was out for walks and text me saying, “I am walking by your dream house.” I would laugh and then continue on with my day.
Then Travis and I received an estimate in the mail on the amount our house could be sold for. It really made me wonder if this was a good time to sell. Travis and I always knew one day we wanted something with more privacy and a bigger yard for the boys to play in. I started looking on real estate sites for prices of houses. Rachel knew I was looking at houses online so she started jokingly texting me when a new house went up for sale in her neighborhood. I would look at it for fun but at that time didn’t really think we would ever move there. How could we? Travis works in Brampton two times a week and it seemed like it would be a long drive for him. Though I looked at houses and started having a desire to live in Orillia I never mentioned it to Travis. The more I looked at houses though I really started thinking how ideal it would be if we could live there. Our church family is there and there have been many times I have thought that if we lived closer it would be easier to be involved in our church. At this stage, with two little ones, it has been hard to help out in the ways we have wanted to and it has also been hard to attend different church events. How much easier would it be if we lived around the corner?
Then one day I saw this house and it just seemed like a perfect house for our family. I started praying about it. I wasn’t sure why I was having all these thoughts and desires to live in Orillia. I loved Barrie so why did I feel like maybe we were supposed to go there? Also, why would we move there when Travis works in Brampton some days? I kept praying trying to understand it all. As you may have read in my previous blog, when God first lead us to Redeemer City Campus I was the one who felt we were supposed to be there but kept quiet and prayed about it until one day Travis said he felt we were supposed to go to church there. It made me wonder if God was placing Orillia on my heart in the same way. Maybe there was a reason I was the first one to feel this way and then Travis was going to feel it? Was there a bigger reason for us to move to Orillia?
I shared my feelings with Rachel and expressed how I didn’t really understand what it all meant, I told her that I really believed that there was a reason why I was feeling this way and that I believed one day we would be living there. One day Rachel and some friends came over and she mentioned that I wanted to move to Orillia. Rachel didn’t know I hadn’t told Travis any of my feelings. Travis seemed shocked. “You want to move to Orillia?” I just laughed and left the room. When I came back the house I had been looking at was on our TV screen and Travis was looking at it with our friends. The friends were bugging him and saying, “Just move to Orillia. It isn’t that far.” That night in bed Travis randomly said, “Maybe we should move to Orillia. It would be a good time before Ziah starts school.” I was a little surprised. When I had the feelings that maybe we were supposed to be in Orillia I never thought it would happen in 2016. I was thinking it would happen like two years down the road. That night I had a dream that my friend Ali and I were walking around a house that Travis and I had just bought in Orillia, and it was 2016, before Ziah started school.
Time went on and I kept praying about everything I was feeling. I continued to look at the house I liked and prayed that the house would go down in price. It did. Travis and I continued to have talks about our future and one day living outside of the city, but of course the big concern was his work. I felt I needed to be honest with him and told him that yes I did want to move to Orillia but I would never want to do it if he felt it would be too far for him to drive to work. One night I sat in Rachel’s driveway and told her I really needed to pray and see if it was just me having selfish thoughts or if it was really God opening doors for us to move. Then I said, “Well I guess in five years we will see where we are.”
That weekend we were at our friends house for lunch. After lunch Travis asked me where that house was that I had liked. Trying not to act incredibly happy that he had asked me I showed him. Travis drove by the house twice very slowly and said he really liked it. When we got home Travis was looking things up on his phone. He was on it for a long time so I finally went over to him and asked him what he was doing. He said, “nothing” and started laughing. I grabbed the phone away from him and he was looking at the house. I tried not to scream in excitement. I laughed and walked away. That night Travis spent a lot of time looking up details on the house, videos on the house, the schools in the area and the reviews on them. The next day he surprised me and told me he had booked a showing and we were going to see the house. He said he didn’t understand why, but he had been feeling like we were supposed to move too. He said that three months prior he had been sure Barrie was where we would be for awhile, but now he just didn’t feel that and he didn’t understand why. I asked him about the distance to work and told him I was worried about that, but he said he had realized it wasn’t really that far and most of the time it was only two times a week. He said he wanted to move out of the city and right now would be the best time because Ziah hadn’t started school.
To our surprise when we went the next day to see the house things were different than we thought. It was beautiful but there were just things that were different about it that we didn’t have in our house. We both walked away thinking this wasn’t the house for us, but knowing we wanted to move to Orillia and that we would continue looking at houses in that area. We believed there was a reason why we both felt like we were supposed to go there.
A couple weeks went by and I couldn’t get the house we had seen out of my head. I started thinking of the reasons why we didn’t like it and they were just silly. They were all material things and though some things were different there was so much that I loved about that house. I could picture the kids running in the private backyard, picture Travis playing hockey with the boys in the driveway and picture me playing in the room that I would make the kids area. One day when I had been on a walk I had seen little boys with rubber boots and little nets playing in the little pond by their house. I could picture my boys running in their rubber boots getting all nice and muddy looking for frogs. There was so much about the house and that neighbourhood that still was perfect for us. Travis and I never talked about the house after the day we saw it but I kept praying to God asking him to make me understand why I couldn’t get it out of my head. One day I was praying and asking God to show me if I was supposed to talk to Travis about it again. Then all of a sudden I listened and could hear Travis talking to his parents about the house. So later I said to him, “You can’t get it out of your head either?” He said he couldn’t. We decided to book a second showing. After we saw the house a second time we knew that we wanted the house and a couple days later decided to make an offer. After signing the documents we prayed God would open or close the doors and then sent them to the real estate agent. Soon after we heard that someone had just made an offer that day. We waited a week to find out what happened with the other offer. We had prayed for God to close the doors, and it seemed like He had, but it was hard to think that house that had seemed so perfect wasn’t going to be ours. We knew there was still a chance that the other offer could fall through but we just had to wait. As we looked at other houses in Orillia we didn’t see anything that compared to the house we liked. We tried to be open to new houses, but it was hard. I knew that God could still open doors if He chose to so, I prayed that if we were really supposed to get this house that something would happen and we would still be able to put our offer in. I also prayed that if we were not supposed to be owners of the house that we would have a peace and know God had something better for us. I knew no matter what that house would be special to us because it was the house that made us realize we were supposed to be in Orillia. There were so many verses I was reading in our RMM reading that week that stuck out to me and helped me have peace while we waited to find out what was going to happen. A week later we got an email saying that the buyers that had put in an offer were shaky and that we should be ready to put an offer in. The following day we found out the offer fell through and we were able to put in our offer. Two days later the sellers took our offer.
It has been bitter sweet. The night it all went through I was staring at Westyn as I rocked him to sleep and then I looked around his nursery. I pictured the nursery as it was when Ziah was a baby. I pictured monkeys everywhere and me rocking Ziah as a newborn. Then I pictured me sitting in that same rocking chair praying for Ziah when he was still inside me praying he was healthy and that everything that the doctors were telling us was wrong. Tears formed in my eyes as I thought of all these things. We have so many memories in this house and we have so many firsts with our boys here too, so, to say goodbye to this house is sad.
However we are really excited for what God has for us in Orillia. We are excited to be close to our church family and to be able to be used in the church more. I am excited for Ziah because we just found out a little boy he knows and goes to Awana with is moving from Barrie too and will be living just around the corner from us. Ziah and this little boy will be going to school together. I do believe there are even bigger reasons as to why we are moving to Orillia. I know God is a mysterious God and it is neat to know He already knows what we will be doing there ten years from now. I told Travis I am excited to see what God has in store and to be able to one day look back and say “that is why God called us to Orillia.”