To the beach and back...

We've been on Spring Break this week. Ahhhhh... (heavy sigh of relief... tension ebbing... blood pressure falling... facial muscles curving into a smile... sparkle returning to eyes... general sense of well-being dominating emotional landscape...)

Nothing like a little time apart from the rest of the world to help you recover from a manic schedule and refresh your perspective on life.

We have little property located about 100 yards from the ocean that we've used as a get-away for the past four years. When we bought it, our kids were younger and much, much smaller. If you have little kids now, you're going to have to trust me on this: they get bigger. Much, much bigger.

I can remember when we could have had all three sleep on the queen-size sleeper sofa together. Then we entered the girl-wants-her-own-bed zone. Then the big-brother-hates-getting-pummelled-by-the-little-brother territory. So one queen-size sleeper sofa turned to one queen-size sleeper sofa plus an Aerobed. Then there was one sofa-bed-not-folded-out paired with two Aerobeds. And everyone had their own tiny bit of space. Of course, then we had to climb through a major obstacle course to get to the door, too.

So about a year ago, we decided that size, schedules, and school tuition bills necessitated putting the condo on the market. We had mixed emotions, but truly left it at the foot of the cross for whatever the Lord had planned. In six months we had two showings. It's a cute place too. And we priced it moderately. Not low, mind you, but moderately. No offers, but lots of glowing feedback. Did I mention that there were no offers?

We let the listing expire and weathered the winter, waiting on spring to come to re-list.

On Easter Monday, I emailed April, our Realtor (Cool, huh? The month is April. Our Realtor is April...), and told her we were coming down from Tuesday through Saturday and wanted to re-list.

Oh, one detail that I omitted was that we also tried to rent it out. We spoke with three different property management companies and were horribly unimpressed with each. One didn't want another one-bedroom condo to lease. One took days to return our calls. One had three personnel changes in one month, so we had no idea what was going on. Thus, the waiting through the winter.

OK... back to April (the month and the Realtor)... as an add-on in the email,I told April we would pursue a rental but we'd had no success in finding property managers.

There are a lot more details in the story that I'm going to leave out, but here's the short version. One of April's listings is under contract and scheduled to close at the end of... well... April. The owner's daughter (her name is CJ) had been living in the unit and needed a place to move. She found an icky condo with pink walls and carpet that she could afford but was going to have to re-decorate before moving in. Just before she signed the lease, April told her about our condo. She showed it to her (and her parents came along to see it), and CJ (and her parents) loved it. We signed a lease with CJ on Saturday. We are thrilled.

CJ calls herself a Beach Girl, and she truly adores the beach. Like me. She's a wound-care nurse in a long term care facility. She has a quiet and gentle spirit. She doesn't smoke or party. Her dog lives with her parents, so he won't be staying in the condo. She has a boyfriend who has his own place and she assured us he won't be living with her. He will be coming by to surf, though, as our condo is located right across from the primo surf break of our beach. She is excited about moving in; we are grateful for the Lord's provision!

Two favors we'd love to ask of YOU, though:

1) Will you pray that CJ will have a peaceful, safe, joy-filled time living in our condo?

2) If you EVER hear of anyone wanting to purchase property on the southeastern NC coast, give them April's contact information. Her website is here.

I can't say enough about April. She has been amazing. She connected us with CJ and created what she called a "win-win" situation. CJ's family has worked with April off and on for ten years, so CJ came with glowing recommendations based on a long-term relationship with her. April was concerned for us that we would take a huge loss if we sell now, so she was thrilled to give us another year to let the market recover. And for coordinating this lease agreement, April gets... nothing more than personal satisfaction of helping out two sets of people.

NC Real Estate Commission rules are very picky about compensation terms. While I can't even give April a gift certificate to a nice restaurant as a "thank you" without getting her in trouble with the Commission, I CAN promise to recommend her to everyone I know. :-)

Once again, we thought we knew what to do, but we are blessed that the Lord has plans and resources we can't even fathom. God is faithful!