October 10, 2019
FULL. CIRCLE. MOMENT.
In the summer of 2013 I was a year into living in Chicago, IL (where I had moved to after spending my entire life within a 20 mi radius of my hometown of Clearwater, FL)
I had left Florida for a FRESH START. I wanted to be known for my NEW life as a COACH and Christ follower, not as a bartender + ex-lingerie model + FAILED biz owner who had filed bankruptcy at 25 years old! Running away to the frozen tundra called CHI-TOWN seemed like a fantastic idea a year prior, but I knew in my heart that FLORIDA was calling me HOME!
Life from 2010 to 2013 couldn’t have looked any more different! From losing everything to then becoming the first ever female top coach that year, SO MUCH had changed. That change took INSANE INNER TRANSFORMATION and extreme work efforts, but I was so proud that our dreams of creating freedom for our family were coming to fruition!
London was 4 years old at the time and I KNEW the exact neighborhood I wanted her to grow up in! It was a guard-gated, planned community with a park, a giant pool & slide and filled to the brim with kids for her to play with! I stalked the MLS listings from over 1,000 miles away, looking for rentals in the neighborhood to pop up (there is no buying a house 3 years post-bankruptcy) & one day, a month into the search, THERE. SHE. WAS!
In full blown panic that we HAD to land this house while it was still available, I ran to my husband and exclaimed that we needed to book a flight home to Florida to see it ASAP! A few days later we were walking through that house, envisioning ourselves raising London there and continuing to build our Dynasty from that home! I could see us getting a couple hours of work in and then heading to the pool with London to swim until nap time… AH it was PERFECT! We were IN!
But listen, I am a realist. With a bankruptcy on my record from three years earlier, I knew the home owner would have questions and concerns. I had saved a good amount of money by that point and shared about our journey with London being born with a brain bleed and how we had rebuilt our lives over the past few years and even shared my social media and bank statements to assure them we were good for it… A few days later we heard back. They denied us.
CRUSHED, I came to the conclusion that the only way they’d likely rent to us is if we paid the entire YEAR all up front… Our realtor came back a day later… THEY DENIED US.
WHAT?!?!? It felt like I was punched right in the GUT from a stranger that was now once again 1,000+ miles away as I sat in my living room back in Chicago, sobbing over the dream I had worked so hard to give my family and yet had failed to make come true despite my best efforts, simply because of my past mistakes.
We inevitably moved into a small townhouse in that DREAM neighborhood for a few months before finding our CURRENT house and deciding to pay for it in FULL, so as to not have to face the rejection and humiliation I had experienced a few months prior. That house DRAINED our bank account, but FILLED our hearts. No one was taking that sucker away from me… EVER.
Fast forward 6 years later… 9 years since we lost it all.
The house that we bought last month and now own in full just happens to be a few houses down from the house that REJECTED US as renters 6 years prior. IN the DREAM NEIGHBORHOOD, as OWNERS!
God knew ALL ALONG that He was going to fulfill that dream for us… I just had to TRUST His TIMING & stay on HIS path instead of rushing the process to get there before I was likely ready for the responsibility that comes with it! Just a reminder that God knows the desires of your heart & will fulfill them, but not until we give Him control and show Him that we are truly READY.
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