The things you learn when you try to move your family
I am in the middle of the process of moving. If you ever want to add stress to your life try doing this. If you ever want to see all the facets of your family, try doing this. If you ever want to push your faith to the limit, try doing this.
I am in the middle of the process of moving. If you ever want to add stress to your life try doing this. If you ever want to see all the facets of your family, try doing this. If you ever want to push your faith to the limit, try doing this.
We had an idea a year or so ago when my involvement with Bible.org started to take up more of my life that this was going to happen, we just never knew when. We had a better idea when I ended a career of working for regular companies and started working only for Bible.org. We knew this day was going to come but still didn’t know when. During a trip to the office in Richardson, in January it became very obvious that to me that the time was now. While in Texas I kept thinking how do I break this to my wife, after all we were not expecting the move to happen this year. Sunday evening I called her and during the conversation I brought up the fact that God was pulling at me that we need to move this year. There was silence. I thought oh great here it comes. She said that’s funny cause the sermon at our home church today was about moving out of your comfort zone and she felt God was talking to her.
How neat was that? God was speaking to both of us at the same time preparing us for this move. Of course right after that she laughed and said she really didn’t see it happening as there were some huge roadblocks in the way, and then she went on to list them. She said that if God really wanted us to move the road blocks would go away. Over the next few months. don’t you know that God removed every one of those roadblocks, and as each one fell we both looked at each other and said WOW, we knew that God. He enabled us to see his hand right as it happened. Most times you can look back on something and say I can see now that God had his hand in that. But God was letting us see it as it happened. I call this grace.
We ran into some problems along the way that prevented us from getting the house on the market when we wanted it to. We actually listed the house one week before I went to Texas to look for a house. Our agent in NJ told us not to get too hopeful as the market was full and it was a buyers market. I told her I know God was in control and he was involved so be ready. I don’t know if I said that because I truly believed it or cause I knew it was the right thing to say. Our house went on the market on Monday and on Wednesday we had a buyer. Our agent was shocked. I knew once again God was here and watching over us.
So now I was flying to Texas knowing we had a buyer, knowing God was in control and was feeling kinda cocky about getting a new house. This was the first of my mistakes. I spent all week with our agent in Texas, we looked at so many homes and by Friday we picked one out and put in our bid. I thought no problem the next day I was flying home with my mission accomplished. As I was getting ready to get on the plane our agent called and said the seller said no. He didn’t want to wait on our house being sold he just wanted us to buy his house. there was nothing I could do as I was boarding the plane. Our agent said she would put some things together and call me when I land.
When I landed she had a new list of houses for us to look at. Honestly she had this house that was so much better than the house we first picked. It had everything on our want list and so much more. We thought Oh ok God you were letting us know this was the house. So we put on bid in. Turns out that just as the seller listed his house he found out he had stage 4 cancer and was dying. Trying to work out a deal with him was not easy as he was no longer worried about the selling of his house but what was going to happen to him. He started playing some games and we just had to back out of the deal. Over the next week our agent, who we think now is actually an angel, presented over 30 houses to us and actually went to visit most of them for us and sent pictures from her phone as we talked to her. We made serval more bids all which we we either out bid or they didn’t want to wait for us to make settlement on our NJ house.
By Sunday I was freaking and I started to feel like Abraham. I knew I was going to Texas but I did not know where. In three weeks I was going to be homeless and all my stuff was going to be stuffed into a trailer and shipped. Where were we going to live? Monday morning we had a new list form our agent we picked out 8 new houses for her to look at, to say I was stressing would be an understatement. My 11 year old reminded my Wife on Sunday that he was not worried that God had this and he would provide. I stopped and thought, what am I doing. I wasn’t trusting God I was trying to manage this. I kept putting off ordering the trailers cause I didn’t want to tell the person that i didn’t know where i was moving too.
Monday afternoon I sat at my computer all confused wondering what was going on. I said ok Lord, I kept thinking about Abraham, are you asking me if I have the faith needed to do this? I said ok, I pulled up the trailer website. I was going to call them and say come get my stuff but I don’t know where I am going. As I picked up the phone my agent called. She said I have bad news and some good news. I thought oh great here we go again. She proceeded to tell me that some of the houses on the list were no longer showing and she was running into problems with some of the others. I said of course what else at this point. She then asked if we could still get that dream house would we want it. I stopped as this completely caught me of guard. I said yes but I thought the seller was having issues. She said she had a signed contract in her hand if I wanted it.
I immediately thought about the phone call I was about to make. I was just getting ready to call the mover and tell them come get my stuff yet I did not know where I was going and at that moment, in my frail step of faith, even though i was really doubting, God came through and showed us his love and grace. He provided us the house we all loved. not only was this house what we needed but it had things that we just wanted to have in a house.
As it turns out all this additional house hunting kinda put us behind the schedule for closing in time for us to move in without paying additional fees for storage for our stuff. As part of the agreement that our agent was able to work out, it was arranged that closing would still be on time and all the paper work would be processed in a timely manner.
How is it that our God, who is so awesome, holds out to give us the best that he has, as he worked on the heart of a man who was dying to convince him to sell his house to us, can provide wonderful things to me and my family as I was doubting, worried and stressing. It took the words of my 11 year old son to remind me that it’s not about me. It’s about God and once I placed my trust back in him his grace flowed like a river.
Does God’s grace flow like this every time we do the right thing? No, but this time it did.
