All Things For Good

Posted by Lynnae on March 16, 2008

If you're new here, you may want to find out more about me. Also, please consider subscribing via RSS or email. Thanks for visiting!

Rainbow

Like a rainbow after a storm, God can bring good out of our poor decisions.

Earlier this week I told you about our dumbest purchase: our manufactured home. I went over the financial reasons that it was a bad decision and mentioned that I would tell the rest of the story today.

It’s more of a story about how God worked in the situation than a financial story, so I thought it would be an appropriate topic for my typical Sunday posts. So here goes.

In late 2001 my husband started thinking about moving from the small town where we lived back to the bigger (but not huge) city where we had met and married, and where my parents still lived. He didn’t feel his career was going anywhere, and he wanted to move to an area with more opportunity.

At first I wasn’t on board, because I was pretty happy where we were. But right before Thanksgiving, my mom was diagnosed with leukemia. Suddenly, moving closer to my parents seemed like the right thing to do.

We put our manufactured home up for sale, and my husband started applying for jobs in our destination city. In February, our house hadn’t sold yet, my husband was still interviewing, and we found out that after three years of trying, I was pregnant with our son.

I was confident that God would work everything out, and that Jim would have a great job, we’d sell our house soon, and be settled in well before our baby was born. That’s not quite the way it worked out.

Jim was hired at a television station in our destination city in March. Between the job he was leaving and the job he was going to, it worked out that we didn’t even have a lapse in health insurance.

Unfortunately the selling of our house didn’t go so well. March, April, May….we were barely getting anyone to look at the house, much less make an offer. We switched from trying to sell through a manufactured home retailer to a private real estate agent.

The agent was great. The problem was that the manufactured home industry had bottomed out. The retailers, looking for an immediate profit, had been selling to consumers with bonuses, such as two years of free space rent. Unfortunately, the two years had come to a close, and many people couldn’t afford the extra money every month.

People abandoned their homes to the banks. In fact, our own neighbors left in the middle of the night and abandoned their home. Banks were selling the homes for pennies on the dollar, just to get rid of them.

That was bad news for people like us. We owed $19,000 on our home, and knew homes better than ours that were selling for half as much.

We started to question whether God was in our move or not. We prayed and rightly or wrongly (I still haven’t decided which), prayed that God would have us moved by September first, or we would rethink our plan to move at all. Our baby was due in October, so September was pushing it.

June. July….still our home hadn’t sold. Meanwhile, my husband was driving 100 miles to and from work every day, I was getting big and uncomfortable, and I was mostly single parenting our 4 year old daughter. We were tired. We were discouraged. And we were getting desperate.

In the middle of August we started trying to come up with other options. We looked into moving our home. Unfortunately, we’d have to take out a $10,000 loan to make that work. Not worth it.

We looked into renting a small apartment, but couldn’t afford two homes, no matter how cheap.

We looked into renting out our home, but our park rules wouldn’t allow it. We were stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Then on August 19 we got the call. We had an offer on our house. My husband, who just happened to be home that day, and I went to sign the papers. There was a condition to the offer, though. The buyer wanted to take possession in 10 days.

Long story short, we agreed to the offer. We almost got our full asking price, and managed to sell our home at a $100 deficit to what we owed. That was great, considering we’d been hearing about people paying thousands of dollars to get out of their homes.

With a lot of help, we were ready to move out on August 28…two days before the September 1 date we had prayed about.

I know some might call this a coincidence, but I don’t. There were so many things that could have gone wrong, and the timing was too perfect. It’s been my experience that God often stretches us just beyond what we think we can handle, and then comes through for us, increasing our faith in the process. And that’s exactly what happened to me.

One of my favorite verses is Romans 8:28.

And we know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

Yes, I have learned (more than once) that God can take anything, even our stupid decisions and use them for his glory. We were uncomfortable for a few months, but in the end my faith was increased, and I gained an incredible testimony to the goodness of God.

Photo by RonAlmog.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Filed Under Christianity |

You Might Also Like

Comments

10 Responses to “All Things For Good”

heather on March 16th, 2008 7:55 am

Wow. God is so GOOD!

You know we have a similar story–trying to move home due to family health issues, not being able to sell for some time–except in our case we had moved in with my grandparents while we waited. They were not used to having two little ones running around as much as they loved it and it was a stressful time.
Kacie on March 16th, 2008 9:06 am

I love it! All in His perfect timing!
plonkee on March 16th, 2008 9:10 am

You know that I think it’s coincidence, (and luck and you working to get your place sold) but I’m glad the story had a kind of happy ending anyway.

You almost certainly would have been right to stay put if you hadn’t got out by September, moving closer to your due date would have been stressful to put it mildly.
Susan on March 16th, 2008 11:31 am

I don’t know that I would have been able to handle that situation as well as you did. I would have been a wreck!

That was a trying time for you and your family, but oh my, isn’t it such a relief to know that God is working everything out to our best, even through difficult times!
childlife on March 16th, 2008 12:23 pm

What a great story and reminder of God’s faithfulness, Lynnae. I don’t think that was a coincidence… I believe that was a direct answer to prayer. And I believe you’re right about those stretching times too.
Debt Reduction Formula on March 16th, 2008 1:37 pm

God is awesome! Thanks for sharing your story, Lynnae. I love to hear stories like that.

My experience is similar to yours. God seems to always stretch us as far as we can go. He wants to know: “How much do you trust Me?”
boomeyers on March 16th, 2008 5:58 pm

Amazing what putting our trust in Gods hands and not letting worldly things (like our own control) get in our way, can do. And even sometimes when he answers us, we still have to question him. Oh us mortals!
Pete @ biblemoneymatters on March 17th, 2008 8:54 am

It’s amazing what God can do. Sometimes he does things that aren’t according to our preferred timing, but his timing is always perfect.

My wife and I had a situation with out house as well where we wanted to move into a house that we could only afford after selling the townhouse we were living in. We thought we were getting a good deal, and that moving is what we should do. It ended up not working out, we weren’t able to sell the townhouse and we were very disappointed.

To make a long story short, we were able to sell our townhouse 1 year later for the asking price, and on top of it the house we wanted had dropped in price by about $5000, so we were able to afford some upgrades at the same time.

God can take a disappointing situation, and turn it around to be a wonderful blessing!