The House

We signed for a house...
Did I just say that? I don't feel old enough to sign for a house.

Here in Durham we live in college accommodation in our first year, live in a student house for our second year and then get to choose in third year. 

I was either naive or optimistic that finding a house in Durham would be easy. I am going with the fact that I was optimistic! We knew there were a lot of students and a lot of houses. We were assured there were more houses than people, that we would know when it was right.

If I am honest all the above are true. There are enough houses to go around, please don't ever think I was destined to live in a cardboard box! What we hadn't counted on was how quickly everything moved.

A week ago we started looking. We hadn't counted on every other group in Durham looking too. We came out of one viewing to find two groups waiting to look around after us. We got to one house and found that the contract had already been given and the group were ready to sign.

It was such a strange environment to look around in. We tried searching online but the sites couldn't keep up to date with which houses had been taken. We went back to basics, wrapping up warm, donning the wellies and walking around the big student housing area. It felt like an adventure, walking along the streets looking for the signs in the windows, phoning the landlords and crossing our fingers that the house wasn't taken.

Sometimes it was hard, Sometimes it was disheartening and sometimes it was funny. We trusted that we would find a place to live, but sometimes holding onto that after ringing the tenth landlord is tough.

Towards the end of the week God threw a curve ball in our direction and our house situation changed. His plan was ultimately greater than ours had been.

Two hours after the change in plan we found a house. It was sweet and cosy with a nice lounge area and decent sized bedrooms. It was cheaper than any others we had found and best of all it was available!

I am still in awe of how quickly the situation spun around, how events moved, how we found a house we all liked and how God worked in it all.

Last night we put pen to paper and signed. Our house. For a year. Doesn't that sound grow up!