homeowners no longer

I knew today was coming. In fact, I thought "today" would be August 29th. However, some lending issues, then some appraisal underwriting issues, then the need to re-sign all the closing documents we had pre-signed, meant the closing for the selling of our home was today. I knew it was coming. And and I knew I'd be sad. And I was. First, I'll try to console myself with all the great things the selling of our house means.

1. THE JUDDS ARE DEBT FREE! No consumer debt, no student loans, no mortgage. We're 100% in the black. (except the continuing debt to love one another...we still have that one)
2. We don't have to manage (or pay someone to manage) a property while living on another continent. 
3. Not only did our mortgage get paid, we also got a issued a check. 
4. The sale of our house was amazingly easy. The first call James made to a realtor friend to ask about the market resulted in her son-in-law (also a realtor) going to look at the house and making an offer on the house. It never technically even went on the market. We didn't have to endure weeks of showings. They didn't ask us to make any repairs. It was marvelously easy. 
5. The house is going to great buyers who will love it and love the neighborhood. And loving the neighborhood wasn't a given for a potential buyer. 
6. The house has also been a point of contention between James and me. (My undying love and affection for it, and his hating all the messes we got in with the rebuilding, the financing, and the property management). Now there's no house to contend with. We can move on down the list of things we sometimes disagree about. :)

And now, if I may: the lamenting. As I said before, I loved the house and although I mentally understand all the reasons above, I'm emotionally sad to see it out of our possession for many reasons.

1. We got to rebuild;/remodel the house from an exterior shell and subfloor to a 4 bedroom, office, 2 living room, 2 bath home.

A guy we'll call Max bought the property at a sheriff's sale and basically saved it from demolition. He had just returned from a stint in Iraq as a contractor and told us working on the house was his therapy. He gutted the house, fixed the foundation, put in new subfloors, installed downstairs HVAC, installed a fireplace, started the siding, did some electrical work, and completed one bathroom. 

We bought it in the early stages of renovation basically as the exterior shell with subfloors and one bathroom. Here are pictures of how it looked when we bought it:

upstairs living

Stairs (but we had to tear those out and build new ones)

outside front

upstairs bedrooms 

outside side view

outside back view

outside front 

The worst decision we have made thus far in our marriage: We lived in the house while remodeling it. This means things like this happened:

I am doing our dishes in the bath tub. (remember, it was the only finished room!)

Our life basically looked like this. We had a bed, a desk, a few suitcases and our hang up clothes that we moved from room to room as necessary. And we had a piano. We had to move the piano in when we bought the house so that we wouldn't have to move it twice. I mean, we have good friends, but no one has good enough friends to move a piano twice. (thanks Darin Chapin!)We were both working full time professional jobs where we had to look like normal people who weren't covered in sheet rock dust and paint. I am sad about selling the house, but not about that period of our lives being over. 

And here's me cooking in a partially complete kitchen. The room I requested to be finished first was, of course, THE LAST room to be complete. 

laying flooring in homestay bedroom #1. We finished each of those upstairs bedrooms just hours before the student who would be staying there arrived. 

Here's a link to our old real estate listing if you want to see the "after" pictures.

2. We made such great memories with our students. Finishing the house and having three extra bedrooms meant that we were able to host 17 students from 11 countries. (And Joshua. That's definitely another post). Here are some photos of some of our students:

We tried to make it a tradition to take them all to Pops. This group was our first full house. Lucy from Korea, Elana from Taiwan,  and Ebru from Turkey

And most of them got to experience country life at the Judd ranch

and "Live on the Plaza"

Turki aka Rocky. Saudi guys with no restrictions on their haircuts while in the States :)

Kim from Vietnam, Myong Shim from Korea, and Kerry from Taiwan

Yumi from Japan stayed with us even after Catherine was born. And Yumi was Catherine's favorite person. Seriously. 

3. My first child was born there. I don’t mean we lived in that house when she was born and we brought her home from the hospital. I mean we had a homebirth and she was born in that house, within those walls. With two (or three?) students home upstairs. And only one of them knew a birth was taking place downstairs! We watched the first 11 months of her growth happen in that house. We found out we were expecting #2 while living there.

First moments after her birth

Our last trip to the house in August of this year I made Catherine take this cheesy picture with me of where she was born.

4. We loved the neighborhood. Before we lived in this house we lived just a few blocks over on College, also just south of 16th. Before that, I lived on 16th and James lived in Gatewood. We lived near the Plaza well before the Plaza was cool. For a time, our church was there. Right there on 16th in the heart of the Plaza. We walked to our gatherings often. For part of the time I worked at Catholic Charities, which was also in the neighborhood.
We knew our neighbors. We knew some of the homeless in the area and some of the scammers who had a different story each week about why they needed cash only to turn on their electricity or whatever. We knew Miss Angel and her giant eye sore house and the folks who squatted there.
And especially after we met Joshua, we prayed for the neighborhood as we walked in the evening.
We had opportunities to pray with our neighbors about alcohol addiction and sick family members and financial struggles. We still hope that there will be great change in the neighborhood, but not just with walkability and lower crime rates and better schools and people pulling in their big blue trash cans...we hope for spiritual change in the hearts of the people.


5. For me, it's a loss of a dream. The chances are HIGHLY UNLIKELY that we will own a home in China. We plan to be in China a long time. The houses we will live in in China will be much smaller and most likely much less comfortable, less attractive, less functional, and just not as nice. For me this means that the dream of having a nice house to make a home for our family is gone, at least for this season and this time.
A coworker in China recently told me that if she still owned a home in the States, there would have been times she would have left China and returned home. That wasn't true for me, but it sure was comforting to know that if we needed to come home we had somewhere to come home to. However, funnily enough, both times we were home, we had renters we couldn't just kick out so we didn't stay in our house either time. But it was there. On the days that I hated the flooring lack of flooring in our house in China or got frustrated with yet another poor quality something was having to be repaired again or when a newcomer arrived and got to live in a place much nicer than ours and I was envious, I could comfort myself with the fact that I had a nice home in America.
It was also nice to trust in the rental income we received each month. The problem with both of these scenarios is that I'm placing my trust in the wrong place. If we need to come home, God will provide somewhere to stay. And He has always provided for all our needs. Sometimes through rental income and sometimes through His people when there was no rental income. With or without an investment property or a beautiful pile of wood to call home, He provides. He does. Always.

But, I'm still sad to part with it.