how our house went from "on the market" to "under contract" in less than one week

once we'd found out that we were officially heading for seminary life, we had to begin the daunting task of getting our townhouse ready to sell in a declining economy while we both worked a little over full-time. i will not say that the prospect didn't make me more than a little bit nervous. God will provide.

i spoke to my realtor friend, Delane, to get the ball rolling and figure out exactly what all we needed to do to get our home sell-ready. Delane assured me that our house was in a good neighborhood and that the summer is the best time to try to sell property such as ours..and that on average these things turn over in about 90 days. (the day i spoke with her was exactly 90 days before classes began!) God will provide.

we returned from our seminary visit at the very end of April. i had an appointment to get my wisdom teeth removed the following week...which the dentist decided to do in two sessions...so i had one week of recovery at the start of may, and another at the end of may.
needless to say...i wasn't able to get a whole lot of cleaning out and packing done during the month of May....God will provide.

i hunkered down and got the house into a really good look by mid-june., gave away our cat (she isn't allowed in student apartments)..and listed the house on saturday, june 20th . (remember...we're planning to move to Texas in August and pay for school, rent, etc...without a job in place as of yet) God will provide.

a few days went by without hearing a peep from other realtors to show the place. my prayer through this entire process had been that God would lead the right person to our home at the right time..and no one else who viewed it mattered. God will provide.

on wednesday june 24th i recieved a call that we were getting our first viewing. i had a few minutes before work, so i quickly went home and straightened up a little bit extra, prayed that i wouldn't get discouraged if this wasn't the person for our house, went back to work and waited. God will provide.

when i got off work i recieved a call which confused me. "the realtor who showed your home left a contract on your table for you to look over" i honestly thought delane was telling me that they had lost something in our house and just wanted to be sure we got it back to them....it took a second for the clouds to clear and for me to accept the reality that this first viewer wanted to be the buyer! God will provide.

When i got home, i looked over the contract and just couldn't contain my excitement and disbelief (Lord, help me.) They wanted to pay exactly what we were asking and the only thing which wasn't what i would call perfect, is that they wanted to close the deal in just 4 weeks! Thankfully, it was Wednesday, so i was able to take my excitement to church and get the people of God praying and praising with me. God will provide.

Before the night was over we'd renegotiated the close to 10 days later, which gave us that much longer to get packed and out while working. in the midst of praising God for the provision of our buyer, i began to worry about how we would pay for our moving expenses. in that very moment of worry, i came home to find that Michael's parents had offered to cover our moving truck or whatever we chose to use in our move. we were able to move our things out on the 25th, clean the house the rest of the following week, load our relocubes and send them off....and close on the 31st. God certainly does provide!