our home sold!!!!
i know!! it has been a long time comin'!! well, technically only four months, but it has certainly felt like forever. i have the utmost respect for you if your house has been for sale for awhile without an offer, because the whole process is exhausting! no joke... the impending sense that a realtor will call at any moment to show your house, so it must be perfectly presentable all the blasted time, well it can send you right into a straight jacket!!
however, we almost didn't sell the house...
but thankfully the Lord answered my prayers to save us from ourselves. does it sound odd that i have honestly been praying that prayer for several weeks?
"Lord, you know my heart, that our intentions are pure and we honestly want to do whatever YOUR will is, so please give me wisdom & discernment... save us from ourselves! don't let us do anything that won't bring you glory and praise and blessing"
yes, our home has been on the market, patiently (ok, not always patiently) awaiting buyers and we knew that this life change is exactly what God had for us. and i have been so excited to downsize our mortgage payment and having a smaller home just means i'm done cleaning that much faster, right?!
but then something happened.... a huge, ginormous blessing!! it was out of the blue, completely unexpected, not even on our radar. God is so awesome that wasy! when we were just going about trying to get this house sold, trying to stay on course and BAM!! my Man (he is so wonderful, just so you know!!) got a huge promotion! that's right!! (and i am aware that i am using a ton of exclamation points, but this is big stuff!!!) it's the promotion that we didn't ever assume would come available anytime in the next couple of years, much less now. and we weren't even looking or asking for it!!
so do a little big dance right now with your arms lifted high to heaven in thanks to God for giving my Man the talent, the wisdom, the favor for this position!! thank you Jesus for loving us and having such amazing gifts instore for your children, even better that we can plan for ourselves!!
okay, on with the show!! so the house keeps not selling... we lower the price... still no buyers want my beautiful home... we lower it again... but february, march, april & most of may pass with no buyers to be found, but...
we began to pray and think.... hhhhmmmm.... maybe the Lord has given this amazing promotion out of His utter depths of goodness (of course!) and now we can stay in our house and i can still be at home with the kiddos!! we still wanted to increase our giving to missions & charities, be more involved with ministry, grow stronger as a couple and as a family, but now we could stay in a home we loved!
it is so wearing to have the house listed for sale.... i know, i know, broken record.... but three kiddos and a horse a mammoth puppy and the cleaning & straightening never ends. and so with now prospective buyers in sight, it seemed that the Lord had granted my wish to stop cleaning the house 10 hours a day and we were going to stay put....
remember the prayer to save us from ourselves? well, just as we were going to take the house off the market, a realtor called one saturday morning and asked to show the house, and reluctantly i said "sure" and we scadadaled out of their way.... then the realtor called again that afternoon:
realtor: "they really liked the house, can we swing back by again just to walk through one more time?"
me: "um, sure. my youngest is napping already so, we'll just hang out in the backyard while you're here, if that works for you & the buyers."
realtor: "that is perfect! we'll be there in five minutes!"
oh mercy! they come, they look, not quickly but for 20 minutes, and while any other time before i would have been so excited that they had returned for a long second look, but i had gotten to the point where i just didn't care anymore, just the truth.
and two days later, we had an offer! but you know what we did, after much prayer and talking and debating the pros & cons, and prayer?
we rejected their offer... we didn't even counter offer, nope! not us, we felt that with the offer they had made it just wasn't being a good steward of God's money and resource to move, and then we told our agent to pull the house off the market! i am laughing now as i write this because i can see how God knew what He had prepared for us :)
however, we got another call that afternoon from our agent, the buyers were devasted. i told him unless we got full price we weren't going to do it. so he asked us to counter offer at full price... so we prayed again, talked more, talked to our parents seeking some Godly counsel, and i reminded my Man of the prayer: "Lord, save us from ourselves"
so we counter offered at full price, the next day they accepted it! wow!
and five days later, after looking at handfuls of homes that we didn't ever get that "feeling" about, we met a wonderful buyer selling her mother's home (who had passed away a couple years ago) who was doing 'for sale by owner'....
my Man and i walked into the house and i was overwhelmed to teary eyes by that "feeling" and the Spirit's leading that this house was the house.
i want so badly to tell you all the cool stories about our new home! the sellers grew up in this home, it was the first house their parents had built and the only place the ever lived! i love hearing about their family dinners, where their mother would spend her time, their favorite rooms.... to say that we love it is a complete understatment!!! (i think that's worthy of 3 exclamations!!)
so we bought it... it is definitely under our budget, it was under our budget before the promotion... it is old, but i just love it!! the lot is huge!!! it has original 1961 pink tile in one of the bathrooms and i love that, too!
what i really love is how God is good, so splendidly good! He knew He had prepared this home for us, He knew that if we waited until this predestined time that we would get it at the price we needed, He already knew we were close to giving up on selling and just when He had destined it the house sold. He answered our prayers to lead us and guide us, to save us even when we were seeking and trying to do His will. He knows our hearts are set on surrendering all to Him and He is so good and His blessings never end.
we have a good lot of work in front of us... i have been priming walls & cleaning carpets, scrubbing bathroom, wiping down the kitchen, and the endless packing, oh my the endless packing, but it is even better than we could imagine....
i can't wait to show you all before and after pictures!! it's coming tomorrow!!
God can do anything, you know - far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! Ephesians 3.20 (the message)