My Tale of Real Estate: (Hopefully) Nearing a Conclusion

Now sit right back and you’ll read a tale,
A tale of real estate.
I’ve never seen Gilligan’s Island,
but think the theme song’s great!

Okay, now that THAT tune is firmly planted in your subconscious, I will confess the truth. Much to the dismay of my uber-fan brother-in-law, I’ve never seen a complete episode of Gilligan’s Island. I did, however, play Mary Ann as a camp counselor. You know those fun little start-of-the-day skits the counselors do to embarrass themselves entertain and teach the kids? Yup. I can’t remember if Gilligan’s Island was the theme for that week or what. Regardless, I was an adorable Mary Ann while my then-boyfriend played the gorilla. It was fun. I wish I had pictures of that …

Has anyone noticed my ADD this morning? I think it’s in high gear. What is this post supposed to be about? Oh, right! An update on our house situation!

Let’s see … we started this in April – right? Our house was on the market for three weeks when we got an offer. After some negotiations, we came under contract. Just hours after that, our buyer left the country — for two weeks. Unfortunately, just days after she returned, her mother passed away. Then she became very ill. All this left us in a torturous state of uncertainty. Her home inspection was postponed three times. Every deadline was missed or moved. Inspection issues were excessive and argued to the point of absurdity. All the while, we were under contract for our new house in a precarious state of contingency. Our new mortgage was secured and daily moving toward its expiration, while our buyer had yet to start her mortgage process.

Each week that passed reminded us that we are in control of nothing. Fortunately, we know the ONE who is in control of everything! One moment everything was great, the next everything was falling apart. We went from having no sale to having a sale and a purchase and an unexpected tax refund to having two houses to having none. On more than one occasion my husband believed we would be homeless before the end of the summer. It seemed details consistently built up beautifully only to be knock-down seconds later.

Long story short, we had to surrender our new home and take a firm stand with our sale contract. (Read: an ultimatum.) We were fully prepared to re-list our house and find a rental, if necessary. Convinced of God and His power, we found peace and a rather bizarre state of fearlessness. That’s when everything fell into place. The owners gave us an extension on our contingency. The buyer moved into action. Even the mortgage companies came together. Our inspections (yes, plural — I think we’ve had a total of six on our sale and one on our purchase.) passed as well.

So where are we now? Philadelphia. Well, not exactly, but kind of. The dates work out so that we actually are homeless for a while, but that’s okay. We’re staying with family and counting the days. Eleven. In eleven days we should have the keys to our new home. In eleven days we should be done with all this hub-bub. In eleven days I can breathe a sigh of relief as I acknowledge none of this has been in vain.

But I’ll not wait eleven days to praise God. He has been — as He always is — immeasurably faithful through this whole process. He has brought us to deeper understandings of His Scriptures, to a closer relationship with Him and each other, to a closer walk with Him. He has orchestrated details and made Himself seen by those who do not yet believe in Him. Our agents, even our attorney, said they’ve never dealt with such a crazy case of real estate. Now they have seen that chaos evolve into order, all while hearing us proclaim His sovereignty and rest in His grace.

God is so good. In the face of all we’ve endured, the heartaches, the uncertainty, the disappointments and the triumphs, I will CHOOSE to say “Blessed be the name of the Lord!”

That’s my tale.