I met Kevin when I was a senior in high school. We quickly became friends and then started a band. He is really gifted with music. I am not but he let me be in the band anyway. Since then we ended up going to college together at Liberty University. Kevin is a great guy. A teacher. Married to his lovely wife, Kim. Oh and he’s a huge Lakers fan. Enjoy.
________________

We were so excited. We were going to buy a house. Not just any house. Our first house. It was perfect in so many ways. It had Kim’s hardwood floors in most of the rooms. It had her beautiful kitchen. It had my detached garage for a potential “man cave.” The location was fantastic. Everything was perfect.

Then the bottom dropped out.

Kim and I have been hunting for our first home for several months now. It’s been a tremendous learning experience. Not only are we learning about real estate and home buying, but we’re also learning about ourselves.

The first house we wanted to buy had been on the market for six months. No one had made an offer on it. We were totally sold on buying it and wanted to make an offer. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get our financing together in time. The day we planned to make an offer, another couple swooped in and bought the property out from under us.

It was horrible. We were depressed. We didn’t talk much that night. We tried to put a good face on things, but that’s easier said than done when you feel like you’re “walking through the Valley of the Shadow of Death.”

Deep down, we knew that it wasn’t God’s best for us. We knew it wasn’t a coincidence that the house sold from under us. Our heads knew. Our hearts weren’t there yet.

We decided to take a break for a bit from the process. It can be exhausting. Our hearts and our emotions needed to recover. We waited.

A few days later, we began to kick around the idea of giving a second look to another house we’d previously viewed. It didn’t have some of the window dressing (literally and metaphorically) the other house did, but we felt like it had potential and that we could grow into it.

We were considering making an offer on it. We got in the car to go. On our way to the realtor’s office, my phone rang. It was our lender. We were originally told by our mortgage broker that we qualified for a certain amount. We used this number (as any individuals with common sense would do) to guide us in our quest for the home we would buy. We had not looked at any houses that were below this price range.

During the quest to get our credit and debt-to-income ratio shored up, we’d taken out certain loans to help our score and moved some things around. Apparently, we had not properly followed the advice of our broker as closely as he’d hoped. Some mistakes (which seemed trivial to us but not to him) we’d made had led him to decide he was not going to be able to pre-qualify us for the amount he’d previously inferred.

The new amount was nowhere near what we’d need for the house we were about to see. We turned the car around, went home and sat in the living room…devastated again.

The old wounds had just healed. Why was God doing this to us? Why would He let this happen to His children? It didn’t make sense.

A few more days went by. We began looking at other homes that were in our new lower price range. It was depressing. Most of them were dumps. No offense, if that’s your cup of tea. It isn’t ours. We like having all the walls and working plumbing, etc. We’re weird that way.

Finally, on a Saturday morning when we were getting ready to go to a wedding for some friends of ours, I received an e-mail notification about a couple of new properties that had just popped up on the market. One of them was way out of our price range. But the other? It was close. Not quite, but close. I looked at the pictures.

From the images on the website, it was hard to get a feel for the home. I just knew it had potential and that it wasn’t totally out of the question, financing-wise. We needed to look at it and I knew it.

We went to the wedding. It was beautiful, by the way. (I know all the ladies reading this were wondering. You’re welcome.) Halfway through the reception, I told Kim we needed to leave. I called our realtor and said we needed to see the house and it needed to happen today.

She made it happen.

To summarize, the house was perfect. Not the kind of “perfect” that the first house was. It was God’s kind of perfect. It fit us like a glove. We knew as soon as we walked in that we were home.

We’re currently in negotiation, but feel very confident that we will be able to secure the house within the next few days. I cannot explain to you the weight that will be lifted once it’s finally a done deal.

I might smoke a victory cigar. Hard to say.

It’s easy to see God in things after the storm is over. When you are in the eye of the hurricane, it’s not as simple to give God the glory for everything that’s happening.

We still might not get this house. Anything can happen. But I’m at peace now because I know that God’s will is best for us and it will prevail.

Are you thankful for unanswered prayers? Has there been a time when you viewed God as a jukebox that just kept playing a song different from the one that you paid for? Share your experience!