Chewymom

We had been living in north Alabama for about a year when we decided to move about 15 miles west into the town where we had become “plugged in.” We had joined a church, joined three soccer teams, lined up two piano lessons, and given birth to a baby girl in that town, and the only thing tying us to the town where we lived was the proximity to Chewydad’s work.

Whenever I was over in the next town, which was approximately five times per week, I would drive around to see what was on the market. There was this one house that I fell in love with. It was brick, next door to a family we knew, and oh the neighborhood! It had been built around an elementary school. Literally. The school sat on a rectangle of property which included a big field and some woods. And the homes were built on the four streets surrounding the school, so that they all faced the school–like a little square. This house sat on the street along one of the sides of the school.

It had been on the house a very long time. It was way over priced, and a contract had recently fallen through because some mold was discovered in the master bedroom closet. Although it was out of our price range, I began to wonder if we might be able to get the house for half of its asking price. A close friend of mine said, “I’m going to pray for that! We’ll pray that the house will sell for $150,000 instead of its asking price of $300,000!”

I did not quite have the faith of my friend, but I prayed along with her, because after I saw the interior of the house, I adored it. Brick kitchen floor, unusual layout, numerous gathering rooms, a back yard large enough to add a pool, and right across from the school!

As time went on, I debated whether this was the house for us, and my friend said, “Pray for some big sign!” Now, I’m a little leery of that sort of thing, being a good Presbyterian and all. Still, I secretly prayed that if God really wanted us to have that house, he would let me see a purple bus. That was just bizarre enough that it couldn’t happen unless God wanted it to.

Time went on, we continued to look at other houses, and we got a little nervous about the work that might be needed in that house. Another house on the square around the school came on the market, and this one was in our price range. We made an offer, and miraculously sold our house in the other town rather quickly.

On the day of our final walk through, just before closing, our realtor happened to mention that the house we had loved had a contract. For $150,000. My heart sank. We had prayed that it would sell for that very amount! But I wanted it for ME! I puzzled over why in the world we had never made an offer, and I consoled myself with the fact that it did need a lot of work.

I busied myself with my own new house and did not give much thought to the other house. Until I was driving to the local pharmacy located about two miles from our new house. And noticed a retirement home with a fleet of purple buses. I nearly fell over. It had been perfectly and easily within God’s ability to show me a purple bus on one of my daily trips to this town. And yet he kept them hidden from my sight. And meanwhile, he answered my prayers that the house would sell for 1/2 of its asking price.

We watched as the family that bought the house spent a lot of money upgrading and fixing things up–the yard, the roof, the bathrooms the mold. And then something happened and they couldn’t pay the bills. The house went under foreclosure. And we learned that there were major structural problems. Another family got a bargain, fixed the structural issues, ripped out walls, and completely redid the house. It is beautiful now!

And every time I drive past it, I feel a twinge. But it isn’t really a twinge of sadness as it is a twinge of amazement that God had somehow used the desires of my heart, along with the encouragement of a friend to direct me to pray for two specific things. And he had answered the one with a yes–that it would sell for 1/2, and the other with a no–that I would see a purple bus. He was very specific about how my prayers were answered, and in fact, he had been guiding my exact driving paths through the city in the months prior to us making an offer on the house we bought in order to allow me to NOT see the purple buses. And the combination of those things is an affirmation of God’s love and his care of such tiny, specific details in my life.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 29th, 2008 at 8:37 pm and is filed under This and That. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.