We said Goodbye to the Farmhouse this past weekend.
We’ve actually said it before. In April, the farmhouse finally sold and I cried happy tears to be done with the stress and my husband cried sad tears because it was hard to believe it was really gone.
In case you don’t recall what the farmhouse looked like, click the link because you’ll want to remember when I finish telling you this story.
The new owners bought the farmhouse and split the property. With the property (15 acres) split, they immediately put the second house on the property that we had always used as a rental up for sale. We hear it just sold.
The new owners then completely remodeled the farmhouse. They didn’t add rooms, they just redid everything that was in the home and then put it up for sale again as fast as they could. Property around here is hard to get and houses are moving fast.
We found the farmhouse was for sale and immediately looked at all the photos posted because how could we not?
Then a friend of ours who is a realtor asked us if we wanted to go see it. Bless him.
If you are local and need a realtor, this is your guy!
So we made an appointment to look at our farmhouse.
Well, our oldest didn’t because it wasn’t important to him. He’s lived there. He left there. He’s good.
I have oddly no sadness. Don’t get me wrong, it’s crazy weird to step into a place you loved and lived in for 17ish years and it’s not yours anymore. But here is what I keep saying to myself (thanks to a friend who told me this first)…
The house misses you. But it understands. It knows you loved it best.
Simple as it may sound, it’s good for me.
The boys went running through the house and kept shouting “IT’S SO SMALL!” and then ran outside to climb familiar trees, pretend to play football (and say, “How did we do that here? Our new yard is so much better!”) and throw walnuts.
Our youngest, who had forewarned me he would cry and didn’t want to see the farmhouse because he would want to move back, brought home a walnut to plant in hopes it grows a walnut tree here and that was it. Here is home now.
I keep telling the boys, “You have all the memories!”
Here is what the farmhouse looks like now.
When we showed the farmhouse to potential buyers, we always told them the issues the house had. These guys went in and made the house look pretty and used a lot of old farmhouse colors and style to keep the classic farmhouse look. They made it look good.
I think this was very important to Jake because he felt the house had value and so many realtors didn’t want to touch it because it was such an odd property (two houses) and such an old house (how does one remodel with six people living in a too small house?). He took it to heart and it hurt him a lot to hear people tell us that the farmhouse had no value. He is glad to see that someone else thought it did as he did.
I have prayed lot for the new owners that the would have the joy we had there.
That said, we all arrived home after looking at the farmhouse and loved our new home all the more. If anything, it inspired us to work on making this house be all it can be.
Change is tough. A move is completely exhausting emotionally, physically and financially. This last year we went through was harder than I can ever put into words. I don’t ever want to go through all that again EVER, but…..I am not the same person I was a year ago for going through all that and I am thankful for that. So thankful.
I didn’t know if I would ever reach that point, I am not going to lie.
But as I sit here typing this all to you watching the hummingbirds dive into the rose of sharon from my desk window as my boys lounge this morning (it’s just now 8am) in the room next to me before I get ready for work that is just around the corner and know the boys can visit me anytime they want and tonight I may have six of us for dinner here or I may have one to four more as is so often the evening when friends stop in…I realize what a gift God gave us. He gave us a gift in the farmhouse for a great place for the boys to grow up. He gave us a gift in the farmhouse to appreciate all the more the absolute perfection this new house we call home is for us. He gave us the gift of learning in the storm to appreciate the gift He gave us all the more.
And the farmhouse, well, she understands. She loved us the best.
Here is the phrase that has gotten me through this past year. The song on Bethel’s music cd Brave has been on repeat. I wanted a sign to always remind me of God’s faithfulness and just before we left for Iowa this not only went on sale at CBD but was free shipping. It arrived today. And once I hung it up, I very literally began to cry. #itiswellwithmysoul
A photo posted by Denise Dykstra (@life4boys) on
Jun 4, 2016 at 8:50am PDT
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