I always wondered exactly what the phrase "It's like looking for a needle in a haystack" meant. I mean, why would anyone ever hide a needle in a stack of hay...and on the other hand, why would anyone want to find it?
Until Griff and I started looking for a house to rent here in Great Falls; then I understood.
Needle in a haystack? Yeah right. At times I thought that looking for a shiny object in a pile of straw was easier than our newest quest. First, we had to come to the conclusion that we were going to rent a house and not buy one. That decision was quite easy. It was a no brainer to think about the time that we have left here in Montana and figure out that it wasn't worth it to buy a house.
Next, we needed to decide where we wanted to live. (Can anyone see my organizational skills even seeping through on my decision making? Yes, I know. It's scaring me too) So back to where we want to live...if you've ever been to Great Falls, you would know; there are just some areas of town that you DO NOT want to live in. Griff has to post out on alerts and leave me home alone sometimes and there was no way that I was living in some areas of this town.
So I got my search criteria, narrowed down how much we wanted to spend and jumped on the Internet. I Googled house rentals in Great Falls, MT and waited for the thousands of sites that were about to pop up. The results were good...not like they would have been in a big city but I was content with the findings.
I clicked on the first one, searched available rentals and got nothing....
So being the optimistic person that I am, I backed up to the search results and clicked on the second link and once again got nothing... My optimism was fading.
As a member of the military, Griff has access to a site that's strictly for military looking for a place to live. So I jumped on there and got a few more results....this was 6 months ago.
Every time I found something that thought was perfect, we would take hop in the car and do a quick drive by. And what we saw was always interesting. Houses that were made out to be amazing online turned out to falling apart in person.
Sometimes it was quite comical. For instance this one house was listed as being 2,500 sq. ft. with a huge yard and close to the base where Griff works. Perfect! Let's just say it was too good to be true. The house was wedged in between two businesses that were quite questionable and definitely looked like a few drug deals had gone down inside. No way I would be staying there all by myself. I could just picture the people that might be knocking on my door late at night.
So after 6 months of searching, and hundreds and hundreds of prayers, I think that we finally have some choices. I found two houses that are now on our list of definite prospects. We've visited one and I'll visit the next on Saturday.
It took a lot of patience on my part. I would often get "in a funk" and say that we were going to end up living out of our cars or, and this is funnier, we would both have to move in with my sister and Peyton. Life is funny sometimes and I have gotten better at remembering that things will always work out just the way they're supposed to. And that it's not up to me, but up to God and His plans for our lives.
So as we continue on this journey, I'm happy to report that Griff and I will have a place to live very shortly. Griff will move in and I'll join after the wedding. Where it will be, I'm still not sure at this moment but I've finally narrowed down our search for "the needle" to two piles.
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