For Sale By Owner
The Sovereign Hand of God
January 26, 2007
For well over a year, Tricia and I have been considering a move to Rockford Illinois for the sole purpose of joining up with a small, new church—Morning Star Baptist Church.
We have purposefully taken it slow as we realized that this was a big decision and we wanted to be certain that our decision would bear up under the burden of time and all the mood swings our fleshly frames are prone to have. Our decision has become more sure rather than less.
Having let the dust settle with our adoption we decided it was time to work on selling our house. Therefore, we spent all of my Christmas break preparing the house. This was an excrutiating experience as it meant that we would have to remove those great works of art off our walls. Grace has demonstrated that her favorite medium is colored wax as she seeks to express herself with random works on the lower halves of our walls. In fact, she gave Tricia one last chance to demonstrate her skill with the Greased Lightning bottle the morning of our first showing! Timing.
We scrubbed baseboards, worked on some of the carpet stains (everything from Elmer's glue to modeling clay to nail polish), and general decluttering, and decluttering, and decluttering.
Once we felt the house was where we thought it should be, I built a "For Sale by Owner" sign and placed it in the front yard. In addition, we tooks photos and put together a website (www.greysmill.com). We then settled in for the long wait.
We weren't overly optimistic as houses in our neighborhood generally don't sell too quickly—often times taking at least six months and some that have been on the market for well over a year. Furthermore, we had built an addition on our house which made it the largest, most expensive house in this small neighborhood. This, we were told, makes a home even harder to sell.
But that doesn't take into consideration One who is always at work—God.
We had the sign up in the yard (or, using real estate lingo: putting the house on the market) for six days when we received a call from a gentleman who said they would like to see the house. I arranged for a time the next afternoon.
Tricia was able to walk this couple through the house, and after a short 30 minute walk-through they left. Tricia called me at the office to say that it went pretty well but there was certainly no reason to get our hopes up.
Later that evening we received a call from the man and he promptly made us a verbal offer. Gasp! We didn't even have the necessary forms to fill out, as I felt like we had time to get those documents at our leisure in the upcoming weeks.
Last night this couple came to the house and we signed the purchase contract, and while there are still hurdles to overcome, we are pretty optimistic about all of this going through. YEA!
What's interesting is that the lady recounted to us that she walked by our house several times and said that if it ever went up for sale she was going to pursue buying it. So, I guess all of those days of mowing and trimming up the shrubs paid off ;)
In all of this we are overwhelmed by God's gracious, sovereign hand. He chooses to work through circumstances—both good and bad—to strengthen the faith of His children. While He could have chosen to stretch us by elongating this process, I'm glad He chose to sell it quickly as it does confirm our decision. (I have prayed several times that God would overcome my propensity for stupidity by mercifully closing doors that I should not go through.)
So, the next step of our adventure begins.
While we are not certain of the time frame, it is possible that we will be moving to the fridged midwest as early as the end of February. Please pray for us as there is much to be done with regular, everyday life, let alone packing and preparing to move in a month.
One more thing...while this is an exciting time for us, it is also very heart wrenching. We have many friends here and it will be very difficult to leave our church family at Falls Road.
My years at Positive Action For Christ have been the most rewarding, fulfilling, fun days of my life. And while I'll continue to work for them and travel back on a regular basis, this is a very sad time for me. Frank Hamrick has been far more than a boss to me. He is one of my dearest friends. He has been my friend no matter what. Whether I have been up or whether I have been down, he has demonstrated unconditional love to me and has always wanted the best for my family.
Whoa! I better stop before I start blubbering on and on as this could get really messy if I keep typing.
We are trusting in the sovereign hand of God.
