Our new neighborhood?

This morning, we are submitting an offer on what we hope will be our first home. For any new homeowners out there, you know that it's such a twist of emotions: excited, hopeful, scared to death. We now begin the back and forth as we negotiate with the seller, which we hope will not be painfully drawn out.

Throughout the whole process, I've felt pretty calm and (purposefully) emotionally detached. Well... as emotionally detached as you possibly can be when you're living in a basement and desperate to plant roots in a new community. I've tried to picture our family in each of the houses, but only to the point of functionality. I try not to picture first birthdays and candlelit dinners and bringing babies home from the hospital. As we were looking at the house again last night, I did feel as objective as possible. We looked in closets and at baseboards and at appliances and felt peaceful. If we got the house, it would be wonderful. If not, God had something better.

But then came a moment I didn't expect: a moment that I knew I wanted this house. Bad.

As we walked out of the house, we were discussing what we might offer and some concerns we had, and we walked to a city park close by. We looked out into the park and saw a big group of kids involved in a community program playing in the park. We saw young families with strollers taking their evening walks. There were several races represented, all coexisting happily together, and that's when I knew: I want to be here. I want us to raise Liam here. I want us to be able to walk a few steps to the park and see diversity and culture. It was a little taste of heaven for this city/culture/diversity lover. And it all suddenly made sense why we would sacrifice more space and newer properties in the suburbs for a place like this.

We will see what the Lord has in these next few days and weeks. In the meantime, we would so appreciate your prayers for peace and wisdom.