After the fire, I found it difficult to settle myself enough to be able to clearly seek and hear God’s will for us. So one of the things I prayed often, and asked others to pray for us, was for God to “open and close doors”. I wanted God to remove our inadequacy of hearing and waiting on Him and just make things happen as He willed for us.
One of the biggest challenges of our fire experience was finding a new house. Now, one would think this would be an enjoyable process, but not for us. In our past experiences, we were not under any pressure to buy and always seemed to know if a house was the right one, when walking through it. This time we spent hours reading the online listings for houses and walking through many, many homes, never feeling we had found the right one. The frustrating part was not even knowing what exactly wasn’t right about a house or what was missing. Weeks went by. I knew that each week that passed would pushed us further and further back in our closing and move in dates. We wanted to be settled before school started and be in the right school district. Frustration and anxiety started building up in me. More hours reading online house listings and clicking through more pictures, trying to remember why each house had been crossed off the list. Trying to find something of interest to schedule yet another viewing. I remember leaving work one night and just driving through neighborhoods over and over again looking for that special house that somehow missed our attention. I think I was crying at one point and pleading with God to help us find a new “home” again. I knew that my time here on earth was not my “real home”, but I desperately wanted a place to call home again and soon. When I walked into our friend’s house they looked at me strangely and knew that I was not feeling like my normal self. This of course added more pressure to my dear friend/realtor/housemate to find us that perfect home to buy.
We did come across a house that seemed to be a good choice. It was a modest size with some very nice features and updates. It had a nice fenced in yard and a very nice finished basement and technically we could grow old in it and not need to downsize. The drawbacks, however, were that the seller had an inflated asking price and was NOT willing to budge . . . .at all. I remember feeling quite angry with this gentlemen and thinking unkind thoughts about him. We felt that we had a made a very fair offer that was still considerably over the market value of the house, and he did not bother to respond to our offer. We were not willing to pay the price he was hoping for and this left me feeling lost as to where to look next. (I drive by that very house every day on my way home. It is only a half mile from our home!) Finally God has made me wiser and now I remember to feel thankful for God’s guidance in “closing that door” for us. We found something much better. But it took me a few months to let go of that angry feeling . . .silly how our human nature works. (Ok, I hate to admit this but. . . even the kids were wanting to holler out the car windows when we drove past this house. ) There was a metal work of art in the back yard of a pig with wings and I was thinking . . . yeah that’s about when you will find a buyer to pay your asking price . .. .when pigs fly!
I think it was the day or so after my meltdown moments. My dear friend (and realtor & house mate) called me on my cell phone and said to me, “I’m telling you Tina, this is the one. This is the house you are looking for. It just came on the market today.” We scheduled a showing that same afternoon! And we returned the next day and wrote up an offer. And with a little negotiation we were on our way to having a “home”. The sellers were taken a bit off guard. They were expecting a six to nine month time period to sell the house and weren’t scheduled to be transferred out of the area for many more months. So we were making them homeless, so to speak! Three weeks later we met for the closing and were handed keys to our new “home”. It is a beautiful place. We feel so blessed. God was so sensitive to us. He found a place that had a beautiful wooded ravine right behind the house, just like our former home. He found us a place where we didn’t need to shut any curtains on the back of the house. Let the birds see in! He found us a place that is a wonderful blessing to our lives and now we are asking how we are to use this gift to serve Him.
Matthew 7:7-8 7"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.
Isaiah 22: 22b “what he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open “
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