home sweet home: the making of our dream house (part 3)

Many of you are probably unaware that our house was actually part of a larger 300+ acre farm, owned exclusively by my mother. Although I have been residing in our current home since 2006, the house was always located on the same parcel as my parents’ house. My late father had gifted it to me, saying if I didn't take it then, he was going to tear it down. At the time, it seemed like a no-brainer. No rent or mortgage payments, just property taxes and utilities? Sign me up!

When Jared came into my life in 2010, we briefly considered moving. However, in the end, we simply decided to stay, and instead of making mortgage payments for the next 25 years, we'd simply pay for renovations to the existing house as we could afford them. (I wrote about all that here.) Little did we know the impact of that decision, or what a roller-coaster ride it would be.

Up until several years ago, we had never considered the possibility of what would happen upon my mother's passing. However, in March 2019, my mother suffered a stroke, resulting in a bad fall and brain bleed. Although she recovered from the fall, this was our wake-up call. After doing some preliminary research on our own, we ended up meeting with a lawyer in July. Much to our dismay, we learned that the only way to ensure that the ownership of our home would not be shared by me and my two siblings would be to sever it from the rest of the farm.

We were beside ourselves. After spending a great deal of blood, sweat and tears (not to mention money), renovating this home into our forever home, we'd had no clue about the legal ramifications. At that moment, we came to the sickening realization that in renovating our home, we'd just made the worst investment of our lives!

Over the past fourteen years, I had seen our home slowly transformed from a dilapidated century-home to our custom-designed dream house. To watch my childhood dreams come to life as we began to preserve and restore some of its history had been extremely rewarding. This home has been in my family since 1956, and we had looked forward to raising our young daughter here, as the fourth generation. Now it seemed as though our hopes and dreams were about to come crashing down.

We had already considered a severance. My father had looked into it in the 1980's when he'd built his second home beside it. At that time, he had been told it was simply impossible. In fact, I had contacted the county on another occasion, only to hit a brick wall. There was the issue of yard frontage. The proximity to a barn. The minimum lot requirement of 2 acres. The shared water well. The garage encroaching on county property. The list went on and on. Not to mention that our next-door neighbours were currently in the middle of a severance, and receiving a ton of push-back. We were at our wit's end, with nowhere to turn.

At this time, our daughter (who has just turned 3), was attending Vacation Bible School for the week. One evening, as I was feeling particularly stressed about our situation, she said out of the blue, "Mommy, God is holding everything." That cut me to the quick. Immediately, I recognized it as part of the theme verse from VBS: "The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms." (Deut 33:27). I scrawled the words on a piece of scrap paper and stuck it on the front of the fridge where it would hang for the next two years. 

One of the songs from Bible school that Olivia kept wanting us to sing together went like this:

"Wherever you lead me, 

I'm gonna follow.

I'm trusting You, God, 

You are good.

Life will get crazy, 

Wild and amazing.

I'm trusting You, God, 

You are good."

As we sang this over and over, tears streamed down my face. It was obvious that the whole unknown situation before us was an exercise in trust. It wasn't about the house, it was about solidifying our underlying core beliefs about God. Is God for us? Can He be trusted? Is He bigger than our circumstances? There were two inheritances at play here: the earthly (our house), and the eternal (the calling on our lives). Even though everything else might be falling apart, the eternal was what mattered. 

In addition, I soon learned that each day of Olivia's VBS had a theme, based on a particular Bible verse. 

1. When life is good, God is good. (Nehemiah 4:14/Joshua 3-4)
2. When life is scary, God is good. (Psalm 23:4)
3. When life is unfair, God is good. (Nahum 1:7)
4. When life is sad, God is good. (Psalm 34:18/John 16-21)
5. When life changes, God is good. (Psalm 106:1/Exodus 14-17)

It seemed as though God might be trying to tell us something! And so, as we moved through the next few years, we would remind ourselves, again and again, to hold on tightly to those truths. 

A little while later, we got talking to our neighbour Carol, who is a realtor. Although she graciously provided us with a few details about the requirements for zoning bi-laws, she could not answer all our questions about severances. Instead, she recommended we contact a professional planner. Upon her recommendation, we called Terrance from Urban In Mind. After hearing our story, he agreed to assist us in researching our severance options.

Armed with a professional, we were able to get more traction from the county planning committee. What seemed impossible at the start, was looking more hopeful. Yet while each obstacle did indeed have a solution-ultimately it depended on how much money we were prepared to spend. Terrance prepared us for numerous worst-case scenarios: moving or demolishing a (newly-updated) garage encroaching on county property, dealing with the conservation authorities due to our proximity to environmentally protected wetlands, having to upgrade our house to a brand new septic system, drilling a new water well, moving a driveway, applying for a right-of-way and several minor variances, and converting the barn to dry storage. The potential list was daunting and the cost estimate was staggering. But at this point, we'd already invested so heavily in the house and property, we were past the point of no return.

The county would not even consider a severance without us first drilling our own well. (Both houses had previously shared one well.) The problem was, the existing well was 1200 ft from our house and outside of the two acres perimeter we were looking at. Should we risk drilling closer to the house to save the hassle of an easement, or should we drill where we're guaranteed water and pay significantly more money for trenching and connecting? After much agonizing, we decided to go where we knew the water was. So at the end of October, (and $7500 later), we finally had ourselves a well. It was the first step in our severance gamble.

With Terrance's assistance, we had a preliminary sketch prepared (with the new well location), and got ready for our first official meeting with a county planner. Praise Jesus, the meeting went well; the county gave us some suggestions guidelines about what they'd like to see, and so, we finally got the green light to begin the paperwork for the application process. Things stalled over Christmas and New Years. We had to wait several months for a surveyor to complete an official survey sketch, but finally, Terrance was able to complete all the paperwork for our application, and the entire package was submitted to the county in March 2020. However, we were told that even after the county approved it, it would still be approximately 3-5 months before our application would go before council for the final stage of approval.

Then Covid happened. We had no idea how this was going to affect our timeline. Although it was in his contract to attend the council meeting in-person, and speak on our behalf, we'd been reluctant simply because of the added cost (travel time/mileage). However, with Covid lockdowns, the planning committee meetings were now all being done virtually. So, Terrance would be able to do it all for us without any major added costs! We were thrilled when the county finally contacted us with a date for the meeting: a year after our initial meeting with the lawyer. However, a few weeks beforehand, we were notified that we'd been bumped to the next date. Wait, wait, and wait some more. Everything about the entire process had been agonizingly slow, and this was no exception.

Finally, big day arrived. We waited on pins and needles all day long for the council meeting to start. The Bible verse of the day that came up on our calendar happened to read, "I will praise the Lord who councils me"(Pslam 16:7). Our Bible story at dinner time that evening also just happened to be the story of David and Goliath!

Ironically enough, I did not even get a chance to participate in the live meeting or hear the final decision, due to a technical error. I didn't even know we'd been approved until Terrance called to say the meeting was over and we'd gotten approval. I then watched a replay of the meeting online, just to make sure! We were blessed that there was no mention of a septic inspection, or timeline on connecting the new well. However, the list of conditions was long, expensive, and time-consuming.

With the approval came a two week period of appeal (more waiting!) and then we had exactly 12 months to meet all the conditions they gave us, which included officially changing the usage of the barn to dry storage; move my mother's driveway closer to her house to allow us a wider lot frontage; complete the official survey; register the easements, and enter into an encroachment agreement with the county for the garage.

By this time, it was already September. By the time we were able to get the new driveway entrance permit, October was nearly over. Precious time was ticking and we were getting antsy. After getting the runaround from contractors, we finally found someone able to move my mother's driveway and close up the old one the first week of November. At the same time, we were at the mercy of the surveyor's busy schedule. The official prints were completed just after Christmas but delayed because of red tape with the county's encroachment agreement. It wasn't until March 2021 that we had all the paperwork and red tape completed.

Meanwhile, with spring's arrival, we had all the leftover landscaping that didn't get finished before the snow last November. We picked ridiculous amounts of rocks, moved roughly 12 cubic yards of topsoil, graded it all by hand, and then sowed grass seed over the old driveway.

Finally, it was time to go to the lawyer, to have my mother sign all the legal paperwork. By this time it was April 30th. Just when we thought things were nearly complete, we had to go back again in the middle of May to sign yet another document after the lawyer had accidentally omitted something. Then, more

waiting as the lawyer filed all the documents with the county and the land registry office.

Finally, TODAY - 23 months (almost to the day) after our first meeting with the lawyer - we received the confirmation and paperwork copies from the lawyer that the severance of our house and 2-acre parcel is COMPLETE!

Today we celebrate God's faithfulness in seeing us through an incredibly challenging time in our marriage and family, and look forward to what's in store.

You are here, working in this place

I worship You. I worship You...

You are Waymaker, miracle worker, promise keeper
Light in the darkness, My God, that is who You are...

Even when I don't see it, You're working
Even when I don't feel it, You're working
You never stop, You never stop working...

-Waymaker, Bethel Music