Confirmation

Almost five years ago, in the summer of 2009, I stopped shopping for a new house.   I had a lovely home in the suburbs of Seattle, but I had longed all of my adult life to be out in the country where the noise and the chaos of the city couldn't quite reach me.  After searching high and low, east and west, north and south for a house that would fit the bill, I made an offer on a 2 acre parcel in a location reasonably remote from Seattle.  In a down market, I assumed that I would be dealing with a motivated seller.  Motivated he was, but only at his asking price, on his terms.   So, after a month of offering and no counter-offering followed by searching all around for another comparable house, I did the reasonable thing and gave up.   Housing market crash or not, I seemed stuck in the suburbs.  Groan.

In retrospect, I can now see that God must have been laughing at my plans and my impulsive decision to give up on the search.  Indeed, He certainly had other ideas for where I should live.  Whidbey Island, Washington was top on His list, but not even on my radar screen.   Toward the end of the summer, He was finally able to reach through my rather dense head and stubborn heart and that is how we ended up on Frogwater Road on Whidbey:

A year later, my mother passed away, and I found myself the not-so-proud owner of three houses... yet the surprised recipient of the RainBird Package that would bring us out of the gray, rainy season in Western Washington to Florida where the sun made nearly a daily appearance during the winter.  And so started the annual migration to Clearwater from Frogwater during the winter months.   This year, as we arrived back at Frogwater, I had my doubts as to whether I still wanted to live in Washington.  Five days after our return, after a particularly bad set of days at work, in traffic, and under stress, I actually said to Barry:   "I want to go back to Clearwater; can we please sell the house and leave?"  A day later, after another busy day at work in Seattle, we rolled off the ferry and onto the road home.  At that moment, God decided to remind us of His wishes, when He unrolled this unbelievable panorama:

Yes, well, so much for the idea of moving to Clearwater year round.   This little show of beauty reminded me that when God reveals His plans for us.... He doesn't hesitate to remind us of those plans over and over again when we stumble, groan, and fumble with their implementation.

Thank God for that!

p.s. I'm still looking for the pot of gold in our woods!