Every Good and Perfect Gift (Part One)

God's timing. God's timing. We hear this phrase so often, but many times I wonder why God's timing so often doesn't make sense to us.

Ten years ago, Heath and I bought a piece of land to build our next house on. This wasn't because we were rich and needed a dream home or were discontent with our current house. I loved our house! Heath had built it with his own hands, and it is a beautiful house that meets our needs and is in an area we like. No, we didn't NEED to build a home. But we wanted to build again, with the ultimate goal being to eventually have no mortgage. Since Heath does the work himself, we automatically have a ton of equity in our home because of all the costs saved by doing the work himself. He rebuilt our first home; it sold easily and gave us profit to build again. So we figured, build and sell, build and sell, and soon be debt free!

So, using the equity in our current home, we bought the land. That was 2008. At the time, we had just completed our home study for our first adoption, and moving would require redoing (and re-paying-for) a lot of that process. So we thought,”Let's finish the adoption, get Tabitha home and settled, and then we'll sell our house and start building.” Reminder, that was 2008.

Little known to us, we had bought the land at just the wrong time. The housing market crashed just after our purchase. Our house lost about a third of its value. Of course, we had bought the land counting on the sale of our house to pay the land off, and even leave a good portion of what we needed for building costs. Instead, we were faced with our house being worth significantly less than what we owed on it. Not to mention, we were now paying our regular mortgage, plus a second payment for the home equity loan we used to buy the land. Not a good place to be. Our plan to get out of debt (a wonderful goal and good Biblical principle) had become increased debt with no way out.

When I think back to that time, I realize we did make one mistake. Well, two. One was we didn't know anything about the market economy. Some people knew a crash was likely, but we didn't do any research about that kind of stuff. (Lesson learned: sell first, buy second. Even if it's inconvenient, it would have saved us a lot of heartache!) The more important lesson learned was not to forget to pray! Things were selling fast at that time, and this land looked perfect for us, and we jumped on it! We didn't pray about it, we didn't seek counsel, we just did it. Ten years later . . . lesson learned.

Tabitha was adopted in 2009. After a year or so, we were ready to get started, and we put our house up for sale. Unlike our first house, which sold in two days and we had our choice of two offers, nothing happened this time! We were already listing it well below where we had hoped to sell, and we got not a single offer. It was shocking. And a bit terrifying. This wasn't our plan. What were we supposed to do now?!

After several months, we took our house off the market and decided to wait for the economy to improve. Our second adoption was in 2011. After Rayanna was settled in, we tried again. And again. And again. I've lost the exact count, but I believe we've had the house on the market five times, for about six months each time. If you recall, we have four children, we homeschool, I taught piano lessons here at home, and Heath has many not-so-neat projects going on. We use our house. Every inch of it. All the time. So, keeping a house ready for showings at a moment's notice is virtually impossible! Yet, for months at a time, over the course of the last eight years, we tried. Not the most fun thing I've ever done.

We lowered the price with each attempt, had many showings, but never got an offer. We got to the point where getting out of our mess was more important than building, so we tried to sell the land as well. It didn't go anywhere either. Meanwhile, we still had to pay taxes and interest on it. I don't know how many times I apologized to God for not seeking His wisdom before buying. How many times I begged Him to rescue us from this mess! Even if we had to live in a tiny, run-down apartment for the rest of our lives, I just wanted out of this debt! But nothing happened, and no writing in the sky told us what we should do. So we just pressed on. Tried again. Got over the disappointment. Tried again . . . For the past eight years.

Last fall we were ready to try again. There were some things we needed to fix, so by the time we were ready it was nearly spring. Enter the well problems. Our well was drilled in the 1950's, and it'd been a trusty friend for as long as we'd lived here. But over the past couple years, there were occasional problems. If we had a drought, there would be times where it would go dry for a few hours. It only happened a few times, nothing we couldn't live with. But this past winter, it started running dry more frequently. Every couple of months, then every few weeks, then multiple times a week. We realized we'd have to have it fixed. Fortunately, we were able to have an excellent new well drilled for less cost than we anticipated. That was a pleasant surprise!

Finally, we were ready to put the house on the market. We got it all fixed up and got everything picture perfect so the photographer could do the photo shoot. (That beautiful state of affairs lasted a couple hours.) We were preparing for a Wednesday listing day, so Tuesday we recleaned everything and made it picture perfect again. I braced myself for another round of months of stress—trying to keep it perfect looking, having our school day interrupted for showings, people in and out all the time—and to my cynical mind, probably all for nothing. The house went on the market on Wednesday (for the same price we had listed it a year before). We had five showings the first day! The first people to come through made a full-price offer on Thursday. We signed the contract on Friday. Settlement was scheduled for one month later. WHAT?!?!

We did nothing different than before. The market has improved a bit, but to go from no offers to full-price is a bit astonishing! To go from months of nothing, to the first people on the first day wanting to buy it for full price?! That doesn't seem coincidental to me. The only explanation I can think of is that, for some reason unknown to us, THIS was God's timing. I don't know why all those attempts over the past eight years weren't His plan. That certainly would have made a lot more sense if you ask me! But for some reason, this was it. I don't know if there will ever be a big “proof” of this. Some miracle that only could have happened if we moved now. But, even if it's nothing awe-inspiring to other people, I know that over the past decade God has increased my trust in Him, increased my contentment, taught me that no house on this earth is my forever home, and reminded me that—no matter the topic—God is the one in control, not me.

James 1:17 says that every good and perfect gift is from God. This sale is one of those gifts, and I am so thankful that God knows how to give good gifts, and knows the perfect time in which to give them.