Where faith, hope, and fear intersect.

Lately I've spent a lot of time contemplating the difference between hope and faith. I tend to be an optimistic person so the word "hope" is one I use often. Mr.P is generally an optimist as well, but he can also be more of a realist than a day dreamer (like me). When we are discussing some of the big decisions we are in the midst of, he often reminds me that "hope is not a strategy for success." I suppose he is right, but if I don't have hope, then why put forth the effort? I find that my motivation often comes from hope.

In the Bible, Hebrews 11:1 says "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." At first that caused me even more confusion seeing the words hope and faith used together; and often people use the words hope and faith interchangeably. In thinking more about it I'm now under the impression that hope is wishing for something to happen a certain way, and faith is believing something will happen a certain way.

One of the biggest decisions we are facing is moving. I have moved a lot - in fact, prior to the house we live in now, I had not lived at one address for more than a year since I was in high school. 10 years of nomadic living I actually got quite good at packing and moving. When we bought our house 6 years ago, I was so relieved to know I'd be staying put for awhile. We knew this wasn't our forever home, but it was a great starter home and we figured we would move in 3-5 years. 6 years later...we're still here.

Some of our friends cannot contemplate how or why we've stayed here - to outsiders it does look small. 4 people in a 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom 790 square foot house. On paper I suppose it does look uncomfortable. But in all honesty, the lack of space isn't high on the list of problems. In fact, I really do love our house. We use every bit of square footage, but we are also very deliberate about what we bring into the house and what we keep and for how long. I go to sleep feeling secure that my babies are right there across the hall, and anywhere I am in the house I can hear one of their cries of distress (I even hear every sneeze and cough). When staying out of town with family who have larger homes, I actually have moments where I feel a lot of anxiety over the fact that I wouldn't be able to hear my children crying out from across the house.

We do have moments where we say things like, "Another bathroom would be super awesome!" or "Another bedroom would be great!" or "I wish we had a garage!" or "I wish we had a dedicated playroom!" And yes, while all those things would be nice, they aren't necessary nor the most important thing to us. Right now the most important thing to us is setting our children up for success - especially P5. The city we live in is not great for special education programs. We've done some research the past 5 months and found that there are a few really great developmental preschool programs nearby - but we need to live in the boundaries of one of those districts for him to be eligible to attend next school year.

The thought of moving is really scary. Will we find a place that is right for our family? How will our kids adjust to a new place? Will we have nice neighbors like we do now? What about Mr.P and I, how will we adjust - after all, the majority of our marriage thus far has been lived out in this house. But the scariest part is selling the house. We are optimistic that the market has improved, and luckily we live in an area that has low inventory and high demand so that has driven housing prices back up - but is the market strong enough? We bought our house in 2007 at the height of the market, so we're in this place where we don't know if we will break even or have to bring money to the table. What if our best offer is so low that we don't have enough money to close the deal? We do not want to short sell the house. We can rent the house out, but the rental income we would make would only cover 2/3 of the mortgage cost. It's hard to find good comparable homes that have sold recently since most of the houses in our area are very unique.

For now our plan is to list the house for sale and see what happens. If we don't get any reasonable offers, then we can de-list it and rent it out while we rent a house that is near the school we'd like P5 to attend. Getting a house ready to sell is a lot of work - and many of the projects we have on our list are not conducive to two toddlers running amok while we work on things. Our current time frame is to have things ready by the end of this month.

I want to have faith that we are making the right decisions. I am trying to be deliberate about saying that I have faith that things will work out, and to have faith that however things do work out we will be OK.