Trusting What You Know

In my January blog,  Upsizing, I made reference to the fact that I just ‘knew’ it was time to move, even though at first glance, I didn’t think that I particularly wanted to move. I liked my house, I liked the neighbourhood, the town, the shire, I had the house fixed up with all the conveniences that made life flow easily. YET, I couldn’t ignore the fact that I had this feeling that it was time to move. 
 
I have learned in recent years to recognize this feeling and to act on it. Some people might call it an inner guidance. Some might call it guidance from above. Other’s say it is a ‘gut feeling’ but it doesn’t come from the gut at all. It comes to me as a warm all encompassing knowing.

To tell this story, I feel it only right to acknowledge that trusting this feeling actually started the previous year (before I upsized) when I got the feeling that it was time to quit my job. Again, I didn’t particularly want to quit my job. I liked many things about it. I had been working there five years, liked the people I worked with, the pay was alright, I had a private office etc BUT it came to me quite strongly and suddenly that it was time to move on. From the outside, it seemed a crazy thing to do, especially at my age. I was 64. I could have stayed in that job into my seventies with a nice pay packet every fortnight, paid holidays, and annual leave. But the feeling was so strong I couldn’t ignore it. So over several months I made arrangements at work to depart. That’s when the feeling about it being time to move became much stronger. So it was the next thing I felt compelled to follow through on.
 
As a single, older woman it was a bit daunting to think about making a major decision about selling a house and buying another, dealing with hundreds of thousands of dollars. What if I made a mistake? But these thoughts came and went quickly, and I was left with what I knew, which was that it was time to move.
 
While I was preparing my home of fifteen years for sale, I started looking at what was on the market in the surrounding area. I had a good friend who accompanied me on nearly every expedition so I had someone to continually talk with about what I had viewed that day. It was such a blessing to have a second pair of eyes and ears with me while doing inspections.
 
I found what would become my new home fairly quickly in the scheme of things. At first I didn’t think I could, maybe it was ‘should’, buy such a big house but when we went back for a second inspection it was really clear that this was my next home and that I just had to get on with purchasing it. I made an offer that was accepted after some minor negotiations.
 
Then I hit the first stumbling block. I had money in the bank for the deposit BUT discovered that the bank had recently changed their policy on term deposits and I couldn’t break my term deposit until I had given 30 days written notice. Well, in the world of buying real estate, anything can happen in that 30 days – like another buyer come along. In the meantime, my house had sold so I had the deposit from the purchaser in a trust fund but soon discovered that it had conditions and I couldn’t get to it either. I was now seriously concerned about how I was going to come up with the deposit to secure the contract on the new house even though I had more than enough money tied up in banks.
 
That week an acquaintance of mine was having trouble understanding how to move files on a new computer. I was going to be in her neighbourhood late one afternoon and said I would stop by to help her. When I called in, she was very chatty and wanted to know what I was doing over her way. I didn’t really know this woman very well, so I was being a bit vague but she kept asking me more questions. I finally said I was on the way to the bank to work out a money thing. I just wanted to get on with helping her on the computer so I could get going before the bank closed. But because of her unusual persistence, I finally told her the situation about buying a new home, not being able to get to my money. We sorted out her computer issues and as I was leaving, she very casually says to me, “I could loan you the deposit.” My initial reaction was, “What? No, of course not. I couldn’t accept your offer.”  One, I never borrow money. Two, I mean who loans ‘an acquaintance’ $60,000 because they want to buy a house?
 
But I went to the bank and while they were happy to loan me the money (at a steep interest rate) it involved a lot of paperwork and a considerable length of time to process.  I did not want to risk losing this house as I knew it was meant to be my next home. The next day I called my former acquaintance who I now considered a ‘dear friend’ – haha. I offered her a signed written agreement and she went to the bank that day and got a bank cheque made out to the real estate agent and even dropped it off at the agent’s office.
 
It was a huge stretch for me to accept her generous offer. As I said, I had never, ever, in my life borrowed money from a friend, let alone such a significant amount.
 
I asked her how she had access to such a large sum of money on such short notice and she said a family member had died and she had just inherited some money and had not yet invested it so it was just sitting in her cheque account. What’s the chances?
 
I also asked her why she would make such a generous offer to someone she didn’t know very well. Her answer was that she knew that I would pay her back within the conditions we had agreed.
 
I felt it was, indeed, all designed from above. I was just going about looking at my options but took the time to stop and help ‘an acquaintance’ with a computer problem, somehow she was being prompted to persist with her questions as to what I was doing that day. How could I say no? It would have been like slapping God in the face. Everything was perfectly aligned – and it had very little to do with me. I was just a part of what was unfolding.
 
So……I share this story with you because it demonstrates the importance of Trusting What You Know. I just ‘knew’ it was time to move and I just ‘knew’ that this was meant to be my next home. In both instances, if I had gone into my thinking mind, I wouldn’t have followed through on what I ‘knew’ and my life would be much less joy-filled than it is now.


~~~
You can ​read my blog on Upsizing here.