Leaving the Neighborhood: Our Journey of Loss and New Beginnings (Part 2)

If you're just joining the story, welcome! Pro tip: you might want to start by reading this first.

We couldn't wait to build our perfect home and begin our new life in the country

We were all set to sell the house in town. It was the beginning of June, and our plan was to sign a contract with a local builder and put the house on the market immediately. Two days before, though, neither of us could take it anymore. We had "the conversation". You know, the one where one ventures into those scary waters of crushing the other by saying "I don't think we should do this." David went first. He said that the winds at his long-time job seemed to be changing. New leadership was taking over, and they thought that the best way to grow the company was to cut back the pay of their only salesperson - David. He was informed that his income would be reduced by several hundred dollars a month for the next six months. We were frustrated, but not crushed. He had done very well for himself, and we could afford it.

So that was the nagging feeling we'd both had. It was the Holy Spirit whispering to us that we should make different choices. Nothing we couldn't handle. We did realize we would need to scale back our house, maybe do something a little more DIY-friendly. In searching for other options that were smaller, we kept coming back to our original plan. We couldn't imagine building our dream in the country without the dream home.

We landed on a barndominium-style. In case you're not familiar with these, think of a large shed or garage with a house built inside. The build costs are not necessarily less, other than they sit on a flat foundation without a basement, but they are far easier to finish without a contractor. That's where the money savings is.

Perfect. By the end of June 2024, we were back on track! We had done our research and were going to hire a company to draw out our dream home as a barndominium. We planned it all out - we were taking a family vacation at the beginning of August, so we would put our house on the market then. Of course, someone would instantly fall in love with it, buy it, and we would close by October. It would take a month to put up the shed, and then we could pull our camper in and finish the inside over the winter. Lovely.

August came and went. So did September, and with that month came the most devastating news of all: the new leadership at David's office wanted his job. David was told that he could work in the factory as a laborer if he wanted to stay on. No, thank you! He had not worked his way up the ladder only to be pushed back to the bottom. And besides, what kind of true leader does that to a loyal, successful employee? We were brought to our knees in prayer. We decided David had no choice but to leave the company.

We still hadn't sold the house, though we'd had dozens of showings. It was brutal. We had packed up half of our belongings after Christmas in anticipation, and most of the rest were put away before the "for sale" sign went up. We had no plans for a job as David finished out his final weeks, and we considered taking our house off the market. Our realtor advised against that, so we kept showing it day after day.

Before we knew it, it was the last day of work. The month of September had dragged as we anticipated the loss of income, yet at the same time, it flew by. David went in to the office for the last time. While he was there, he received two phone calls. One was our realtor. We had an offer on the house that we couldn't refuse - it was almost full asking price. The second was from a friend-of-a-friend, offering David a position in his company. We were in awe of how God had worked and gone before us that day.

Suddenly, we were in a flurry. The buyers had requested a quick turn-around of one month to closing. We had nowhere to live! I began searching the classifieds and websites, looking for a place that would house two adults, five kids, a dog, and six rabbits within our meager budget. We were so thankful David had a job, but his income was now half of what it had been previously.

As always, God provided. We found a farmhouse just outside of town to spend the winter. And we had made enough off of the sale of our house that we were able to pre-pay so we could adjust to our new income without a high rent bill on top of everything else. Things weren't perfect there - the place was infested with mice and had very little insulation - but we got comfortable enough for those few months. We were thankful.

Unfortunately, life at the new job was more than difficult. It was nearly impossible to balance anything as it demanded time that David didn't really have. Our home life suffered as he left before dawn and got home after dark, and still couldn't keep up with the tasks assigned. We finished out the winter in the rental house and prayed that God would provide.

It was incredibly hard to get a loan at bank for our build because 1) there are ridiculous amounts of requirements on self-builds and 2) with David making half what he had, and me as a stay-at-home-mom, we did not meet most income requirements even to begin the process. Rewind back to our original foreclosure house that we flipped - we used a somewhat nontraditional mortgage officer at the time who was unconventional, to say the least. He had worked with us then when others wouldn't, and we had a great outcome. We'd since forgotten about him, but David's mom hadn't. She is also a banker, and she remembered how he'd helped us in the past and told us that he was working for a tiny bank in a small town nearby. He apparently couldn't work for most banks because of his willingness to trust .. well ... people like us.

We immediately contacted him. He was happy to oblige as he looked over our now-tiny income, and we came away with a handshake and a few documents, securing a loan for what we hoped would cover the first floor of our barndominium. We were back on track again!

That was mid-April 2025. We moved out of our rental, but had no electricity or even the beginning of a shed/garage/house (call it what you will). We have incredibly gracious friends, however, and several offered for our large family to stay with them. So we packed everything up again and moved most of what was left into a 40'x10' shipping container on our property. We loaded our clothing and toiletries into a few small totes, took along two mattresses, and moved our family of seven into our friends' basement.

Over the winter we had acquired two goats, a cat, several chickens, ducks, and geese Needless to say, while living with our friends was very comfortable it also required a lot of driving as we needed to take care of our animals twice a day. We kept up that living arrangement for six weeks as an Amish builder put up our outside structure and our anticipation mounted. David had settled into his job at least enough to have time to work on our project over the weekends.

Finally! We were making some headway. We downsized once again and officially moved out to our camper on the land we love, where it would be easy to tend our animals and gardens without the drive. It was early June 2025, and life was, at long last, moving in the right direction. We really thought this was it. But once again, the tables were about to turn.