I have a plan!

Today I had a kitchen designer measuring up for my new kitchen. It’s all very exciting – I have never had a brand new kitchen before but always made do with what’s already there.

To Andrew our kitchen was functional so it was never high on his list of priorities for a makeover, unlike building a train room and a scalectrix room - just what every home needs!

Well we have lived here now for nearly 10 years and it’s time I got what I WANT for a change.

There’s been much deliberating since Andrew died about home improvements. At first I was all set to move. That was my great plan and I set the wheels in motion a mere six months after becoming a widow by putting the house on the market.

It all made perfect sense, the house was too big for three of us, the garden impossible to keep on top of and the location all wrong.

But then nothing happened.

We only had two potential buyers round in a year; the housing market has been incredibly depressed so for my own peace of mind I took the house off the market. Another bold, rash step? Maybe but I’ve been a bit more settled in the last few months.

I’ve planted fruit trees, had double glazing fitted and decorated my bedroom – which reminds me I never did show you a photo…

Bold, bright and luscious lime!

So does this mean I’m set to stay now? I was not entirely sure, still feeling a bit dithery about it all and this was only exacerbated the other day when I found a flyer in the letterbox from a local estate agent.

They have reputable buyers on their mailing lists and spring is a great time to sell.

It put me in another tizz – was this a sign I should put the house on the market again?

Now I wrote a post the other day called Doodling with Jesus, drawing in the dust seemed to work for him as a way to solve the problems at hand. So I metaphorically doodled (and daydreamed) and suddenly I realised I had come up with a plan.

It’s a three year sensible plan and it goes something like this…

I suspect now that I will never get to live in the town I long to call home, the town where the kids are at school, where we go to church, the place where most of my friends live. It will always be a seven minute drive away from us.

And that is OK because in just over 3 years’ time, oldest son will have finished his A levels and be off to follow his own new adventures. Youngest son will have just completed his GCSEs. In a lot of ways it will be a perfect time to move. Possibly not even a little move but a bigger one, maybe nearer my parents, I don’t really know and for now I can accept a little bit of uncertainty.

Because during the next three years, I can enjoy my new kitchen, reap the benefits of my new boiler and double glazing and I can one day eat the greengages from my own tree!

Obviously last time I came up with a plan God had other ideas and things just didn’t work out quite as expected so I hold all these things lightly because I have found that only one thing is ever certain

…if you have a plan God is sure to surprise you with something else!

Watch this space…