When is "enough" enough?

When we moved to IN almost 8 months ago we planned to buy a house just as soon as we sold our condo in Chicagoland. It was thrilling to think about turning our 2 bed/1 bath walk up with one exterior parking space into something "big enough" for our growing family. Well the condo sold in May and here we are still house hunting as the summer draws to a close. We put an offer on a big, beautiful, older house a couple of months ago but we eventually decided to cancel the deal after some issues came up post-inspection and we realized the house and purchase price really were too good to be true. Truth be told though, I think N. and I were both a little relieved after the fact when it became clear the house would never be ours. One of its best selling features was a completely remodeled gourmet kitchen. My dad once referred to it as "a near occasion for sin" which we all chuckled about at the time. In retrospect, though, I think he was spot on with that assessment. You see, we came here hoping for a simple life and, while the Chicago dollars we have from the sale of our condo will go much further here, we simply don't need a gourmet kitchen. I am definitely not a gourmet cook and, while it would be nifty to have built in heat lamps in the range hood since I'm terrible about finishing multiple elements of a meal at the same time, it's definitely a luxury well outside our family's needs. And for me "luxury well outside my family's needs" roughly translates to "opportunity to post a photo on Facebook to make myself feel better about myself" which roughly translates to "bless me, Father, for I have sinned..."

That brings me to the biggest struggle we've been having when trying to shop for a home: deciding how much is really "enough" for our family and our lifestyle... especially when the size of our family is so very much an open ended kind of thing! Right now it's clear that our rental apartment is too small for us. We can't make it as safe as we'd like for G. because there is literally nowhere else to put, for example, our desk and filing cabinet (cords! cables! paper shredder!) which are next to our dining table in the not-so-great room or the sharp cornered guest bed that is 2.5 feet from the crib she opts not to sleep in anyway. How much space, then, makes a house big enough? We think 3 bed/2 bath sounds reasonable for our family at whatever size the Lord appoints. That would give us a master plus two bedrooms for kiddos as girls and boys or bigs and littles sharing seems just fine to us. Then again my parents come to visit from out-of-town about once a month and usually stay for several nights at a time. When N.'s family comes they typically visit for about a week. During football season there are all sorts of friends coming and going. With all those needs in mind it seems prudent to aim for four bedrooms so we can have a dedicated guest space that allows for sufficient privacy and breathing room for our tribe of introverts. Then there's the question of age. Older homes tend to win the battles of both charm and price. I think they're quaint and homey so long as the price means I can, you know, rip out a kitchen or a bathroom or both if need be. Not that I see the need to demo a perfectly good room but I do want the spaces to function sufficiently and I do tend to get the heebies when stuff doesn't seem reasonably clean and fresh-ish. Then I start to think that's just vanity and I should suck it up and get something cheap and ugly and just work with it because it feels noble and I often get confused (read: agonize) over the difference between being simple and being unreasonably ascetic. And of course older homes are more likely to have hidden dangers lurking in the walls like asbestos and lead paint and may need new wiring and all that jazz. Then again a lot of the newer homes at our price point are located near cell phone towers and high voltage power lines which make me uncomfortable. Then there are the kind-of-old homes that don't need new kitchens by my standards but will surely need new roofs and may still need new kitchens before they can be resold at some time TBD and are probably still going to be a stretch on the budget as is. The back and forth just keeps looping through my mind. Every time I see a new listing I think it offers some clarity but it never really does.

So... what to do? What to do? Pray. Yes, I know. I know. And I do. Still, I keep asking myself how it all plays out though. How exactly does God reveal His housing plan for you, to you? The voice of doubt creeps in and says God's got bigger fish to fry than which  house we get. Hello, first world problems! Or the opposite, I start insisting it will be like the closing scene from Miracle on 34th Street where the little girl shouts "pull over! pull over" and the happy couple walks into the house they realize has been selected just for them without even thinking about it. For now I will just keep praying, asking others for prayers, and bit by bit seeking to accurately discern the size, the kitchen finishes, the neighborhood, blah blah blah... trusting all the while that God is good and we will know how much is enough when we see it.