Life in Motion

Ecclesiastes 1:5-6

⁵ The sun rises, and the sun sets,
    and hurries back to where it rises.
⁶ The wind blows to the south
    and turns to the north;
round and round it goes,
    ever returning on its course.

Life is in motion all around me at a breakneck speed. As I write this, I am hours away from experiencing planet earth in 2022. Though most of us agree 2021 felt like it would never end, 2022 snuck up on me swiftly. If you told me a mere five weeks ago that I would be greeting the New Year in Centennial, Colorado, in my new home that just closed on December 30, I would have said, “You are crazy!” 

My daughter and I visited the Denver area the week before Thanksgiving 2021 to scout the land. We planned to move to Denver in late spring 2022 after putting my house in Medford on the market. Well, God had other plans. On Tuesday, November 23, the day before we flew back to Oregon, we sat in our rental car on the street of a townhome community we grew to love above all the others. We sat there dreaming of the day we would live in this neighborhood, The Village of the Knolls. Lian broke the silence and said, “Mom, call the agent on that sign.” I told her the house was already under contract. Lian said, “Why not?” So I called. Little did I know this call would place us on a trajectory towards Denver much earlier than we had planned.

Ryan Anderson of Anderson group came right over and showed us the townhome under contract. He suggested that I get a “verified” approval to submit a backup offer. I have no idea what possessed me to accept his suggestion, but four days later, I had an approval letter from my lender to purchase a second home without needing to sell my current home in Oregon.  

One week to the day after returning from Colorado, a notification popped up on my phone for a townhome in the Village of the Knolls that would hit the market the next day. I immediately texted Ryan and told him I was interested. He told me he would show me the home via Facetime that day before anyone else saw it. After the Facetime call, I knew I wanted this home, so I submitted an offer above the asking price, knowing that the other townhome we saw with Ryan during the week of Thanksgiving went into a bidding war and was under contract for a much higher asking price. By early afternoon the next day, the sellers accepted my offer, though there were multiple offers on the house the first morning it hit the market.

Before I had time to worry or be anxious, I was under contract for a home in Colorado. Then within one week of signing the contract, I listed my Medford home for sale and received a solid offer after a week of it being on the market. Now I needed to figure out all the tasks involved in buying and selling a home simultaneously. Meanwhile, I fly back to Medford on January 7th and will have two weeks to pack up my house and get everything loaded into a POD. Lian and I will drive to Colorado over three days at the end of January. I always mention my plans with, “Lord willing.”

So here I am, writing this blog post on December 31, 2021, on a snowy night in Colorado. My heart feels great sadness for the people who lost their homes in the Marshal fire yesterday in the towns North of Boulder, Colorado. Over 1,000 houses burnt to the ground, and today’s snow covers the charred ruins. Yesterday, when I walked out of the building where I signed on my home in Centennial, a gale-force wind whipped my hair straight up. Little did I know the havoc the wind would cause for the people living on bone-dry prairie grass.

Like Ecclesiastes 1:5-6 says, the sun and the wind are constantly in motion. Sometimes we benefit from their direction and speed, and other times we do not. God is always willing and ready to help us when we are victims of nature’s motion. Life on this planet isn’t easy, and because of that, we turn to God, our creator, and maker for help.

Motion is life, and life is motion, and God has the winds of my life pointing to Colorado, so Colorado I go.