I have a quote hanging on my wall that says, “When you surrender, all heaven will break loose.” In recent months I have experienced the truth of these words. Whenever I “let go and let God,” as the saying goes, God is able to work powerfully in my life.
I haven’t written anything for quite a while, so when I sat down to write this blog entry, I decided to look back and read some of my previous posts. I was surprised and somewhat embarrassed to see that my last two blog entries, from 2 years ago, were about this very subject (letting go). I guess it takes me a long time to learn a lesson, so God has to keep reminding me. I thank God that he is so patient with me.
Before we moved to Texas two years ago, Bob and I decided to rent an apartment for a while, to give us time to look for a house. We were able to get a 6 month lease, so I expected to be in a house early in 2016. However, God had other plans.
It was 3 months before Bob could join Paul and me in Texas, so we started house hunting soon after he arrived. I was gung-ho about finding a house, but I soon discovered that Bob was in no hurry. We took a big hit when we sold our house in PA, so he wanted to make sure the next house we bought would be a good investment.
When we first started looking, Bob and I made a list of the things we each wanted in a house. We both wanted a ranch style house with just one story and 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. Bob wanted a house on a corner lot, in a quiet neighborhood, with a nice yard and a fireplace. I wanted a house that was close to our church, with space for storage, gas heat, and an extra room that I could use as a prayer room and study.
However, there were very few houses in Temple with gas heat, especially if they had a fireplace, and it was difficult to find anything in our price range that was in a quiet neighborhood. By the time our 6 month lease was up, we still hadn’t found a house, so we went to a month-to-month lease.
About that time, the housing market changed, and Bob made the decision to stop looking because he felt it was a bad time to buy a house. I was very frustrated, and I continued looking for houses online, but Bob was set in his decision, so I finally gave in.
That was over a year ago. Thankfully, I was eventually able to surrender to God. I was finally at peace with the possibility of living in an apartment for the rest of my life. I left the whole situation in God’s hands. If God had a house for us, wonderful, but if it was his will that we stay in the apartment, so be it. I would just have to make the most of it. Therefore, when our apartment management announced that they would be doubling the month-to-month fee, I agreed to sign up for another 6 month lease which would expire at the end of July.
A few months ago, when I was driving to church, I noticed a house with a sign out front which said, “For Sale. Coming Soon.” It looked like a perfect location (on a corner lot, in a quiet neighborhood, and less than a mile from our church). By this time Bob was ready to start looking at houses again, so I kept an eye on the sign.
A few weeks later I noticed that “Coming Soon” had been removed from the sign, so I looked up the listing on the internet. It seemed like just what we were looking for, so the next morning I called our realtor, and she was able to get us an appointment to view the house at 3:30 that afternoon.
When we met our realtor at the house, she informed us that someone else had already made an offer on the house, and that the sellers’ realtor would be presenting the offer to them at 5:30. If we were interested in the house, we would have to make our own offer before 5:30.
Once we saw the house, we loved it, so we went right to the realtor’s office to sign a contract. We then left it in God’s hands and went home and waited to hear which offer the sellers accepted.
A few hours later our realtor called to say that the two offers were very close, so the sellers were asking that the 2 potential buyers send them a short bio of themselves. I sat down and wrote a letter to the sellers, telling them what brought us to Temple and why we were interested in their house. I e-mailed the letter to our realtor, and then left everything in God’s hands.
Late the next day our realtor called to say that the sellers had accepted our offer! I am still in awe at God’s faithfulness and mercy.
The house went on the market on June 2; we looked at the house and submitted an offer on June 5; we closed on the house on June 29; and we moved in on July 15. That left us just enough time to get everything out of our apartment and clean it before our lease expired on July 31! I couldn’t have timed it better if I had planned it myself.
After we moved in we took out that list of things we wrote when we first started looking, and this house had every single item on the list. It had a fireplace and gas heat. It had plenty of storage space, and not just one but three extra rooms. I now have a prayer room, a craft room, and an office, not to mention a separate laundry room off the kitchen!
God is so good! It’s amazing what he can and will do when we stop trying to control everything and we submit to his will. It’s all about trust. It’s about believing that God can and will do anything (if we let him) and that he knows and does what is best for us.
