Living With Unexpected Circumstances

Life can be confusing sometimes. Can I get an Amen?

I have written before how we have been trying to sell our home for almost two years. To say it has been frustrating and discouraging is an understatement. We feel, and our real estate agents agree, that we have a fabulous home that anyone would be proud to own.

We’ve tried decluttering, moving things around, and lowering the price and still have yet to receive one offer. Most of the comments we get are that the yard is too small. It’s in a patio home community, people. Duh! Patio homes have small yards. It has been frustrating seeing how little research people do before they look at homes.

A couple of weeks ago our agents visited with us and told us once again that the only thing we could do is reduce the price. Ugh! We are getting so close to the price we paid for it 5 1/2 years ago that it’s beginning to become painful.

During this time of trying to sell our home we’ve gone from wanting to build to looking at homes to buy. Our son graduates from high school in two years, and our daughter will be following him two years later. We decided that it was not worth it to spend the time building a home. So, we found a home we wanted to buy, however we could only do so if we sold our home.

Back to the price discussion…we agreed to lower the price once again but before any action could be taken, we found out the house we wanted to buy sold. 🙁

That caused us to press pause on lowering the price and moving ahead with selling our home. During the week leading up to thinking about reducing our price we had come up with a solution to our current home that would meet our needs until the kids graduated from high school. I won’t go into great detail yet, but it involved utilizing all our upstairs rooms in different ways.

With a lot of thought and prayer, we decided to pull our home off the market and stay in it until the kids graduated. Then we could try again to sell it and hopefully be able to build our retirement home. It took a lot to come to this point. We were disappointed at not being able to move and start over. And, it felt like we had wasted the last two years of our lives.

However, we really believed that God was telling us that He wanted us to stay. For what reason, we don’t know. But it really felt to us that He was directing this choice.

Literally no more than a couple hours after we made this decision, we got a call from our agents saying they had someone interested in seeing our home. They knew we were about to lower our price and that would make our home fall in their price range. So we agreed to let them come see it.

Here is where we experienced unexpected circumstances…the couple that looked at it loved it and thought anything negative anyone else had said about the home was a positive for them. Yay! We were so excited to hear that our home actually would work for someone else.

The drawback, though, is that they are just beginning their home search. If they choose our home it may be a few weeks before we know.

So now we are wondering why God allowed this to happen after we sincerely believed we were obeying Him to stay in our home. And, why does this process have to drag on?

Well, it doesn’t end here. Two days after we showed the house our agents called again and said they had another agent contact them to see our home. He realized it was off the market but was wondering if it would still be available to show.

Our agent quizzed him thoroughly and told him that she would not bother us with a showing if his buyers were not truly interested in our home. She didn’t want to waste our time with casual buyers who were not ready to make an offer.

He informed her that he was actually the buyer. He had shown our home once before and liked it for himself. He just sold his home and is looking for a new home to buy.

He came and looked at it a couple of days ago. We still have not heard what he thought about it.

So, here we are with two potential buyers or maybe none. We just don’t know.

What are we going to do now? I guess we are going to wait at least for a couple more weeks. We can’t get to the changes upstairs for a little while, so that would give us time to figure out what these potential buyers are doing.

Throughout the last two years, I feel that God has been trying to teach me something through the waiting. I’m sad to say that I really don’t know what IT is yet. However, I know I’ve learned a few things.

1. God’s timing is not our own.

I knew when we started this process that it would be lengthy. Homes in our neighborhood usually take a little bit longer to sell because they are patio homes. I just didn’t think it would not be sold two years later.

2. God’s plans are not our plans.

I have had the perfect home in my mind for years. We really thought we were going to have it when we found the house we really liked. After we found out it sold, I knew then God had different plans for us.

We still don’t know what those plans are, but we’ve got to trust that they are better than any we could come up with on our own. In fact, the changes we want to make to our home are probably going to let us end up with a better living situation than in any house we can buy.

3. We can waste time during the wait or we can make the most of the time.

I mentioned above that we have done some decluttering while our house has been for sale. I have to admit, though, that there was so much more I could have been doing during this time.

So, whether we are staying or moving, we know we need to get rid of all the things we don’t need, use, or love anymore. If we move, we certainly don’t want to take them with us. If we stay and are moving all our rooms around, we don’t want those items cluttering up our newly designed spaces. Decluttering is top priority for us.

Even though we just had a garage sale, we know we will accumulate many more items for another. So that’s spurring us on knowing we have a good way to get rid of our items.

Sorry this was such a rambling post, but I felt like some of you may be dealing with unexpected circumstances, too. Maybe you feel you’ve said “yes” to what God wants you to do and now it feels like He has changed His mind. Or maybe life has thrown you a surprise and nothing is the same as it was so you are waiting.

Whatever your circumstance, I encourage you to seek God and His guidance during this time. I know He will eventually reveal His plan in my situation, so I know He will do the same for you.