I recently saw this posted on Facebook and stored it away until I could write out this post. You always hear "Hindsight is 20:20" and other statements, but this one really rang true for me recently.
My husband and I were in the process of buying a house in the Hudson Valley when Hurricane Sandy blew through the area and destroyed the property. At least 40-50 trees were blown down on the property and the remains of the walls of the old stone barn, which was one of the main reasons we wanted to buy the property, had crumbled when the roots of the trees were uprooted. It took three weeks before we could get down the road to the house for the inspection. When we got down there we found a total mess and knew that we couldn't buy the property. We were crushed as we had been looking for over a year and felt like this was "THE ONE"!
Flash forward a few months and my husband's Broadway show closed several months earlier than expected. While we felt a relief not to have two mortgages it was the height of the summer and we were dreaming of the barbecues with friends and planting flower and vegetable gardens in the yard!
I was up in the area a few weeks ago and I had to show my friends "the house that got away". As we drove down the gravel road towards the house looking at all of the trees that were blown down by the storm, a truck pulled up directly in front of our car and blocked my access to go any further. A man got out of the truck and asked what we were doing down this road. I told him I had almost purchased the house and he said "well, you really dodged a bullet". Turns out the previous owner had misrepresented the amount of land that was included in the purchase, there was no dedicated power line to the house (it was running illegally off of the neighbor's power line), no phone/cable lines or ways to install them, and the owner had failed to clear the fallen trees as promised after the closing. He also said he stopped the car because people were illegally hunting on the land and he was trying to track them down.
I started writing this post a few weeks ago - and at the time I was feeling very blessed that we were saved from all of the many hassles that would have come with the purchase of that property. While we couldn't see it at the time, we really were being taken care of and I was finally able to move on past the sense of loss that I felt.
Today I experienced a personal disappointment and while going through the emotions of that I remembered I had never finished writing this blog post, which was so relevant to the current situation as well! I realized that while it is okay for me to feel disappointed that this thing didn't happen, I have to trust that it wasn't the right situation at this time for whatever reason I do not, and may not ever, know.
I am glad that I can look back at my recent experience with the house and realize that perhaps this too was actually a blessing in disguise!
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