Surprise!

As little as 48 hours ago, we had no solid leads on any houses. We were both feeling very discouraged about the whole situation.

Back at the end of June, we were preparing to move in temporarily with Jay's parents. Although I love them, I was discouraged at the course our life had taken. Looking back, it felt like Abraham, being told to move with out an end goal. I did not have too much faith in our situation. I made one request from Jay that I had no idea would have any impact on anything...

So our realtor, Matt Whitman, has been working tirelessly on finding us a home. Since March, I would estimate he has shown us between 50 to 70 houses. Seven of these homes, we put contracts on so that was even more work for him.

On Sunday, I began looking for homes on the internet and we sent off about 8 potential homes to look at to Matt. We've never looked at homes with Matt on Sundays so as to give him some time away from us. However, Jay decided to call Matt and see if we could look at any that day since we are going out of town on Thursday.

Matt went to his office and found two homes still available. Only one was available to look at that Sunday evening so we went. I must admit, I went without thinking we would find something we love or even something that was a viable option.

So when I walked in this regular sale home (all the others have been shorts sales and foreclosures) and fell quickly in love. It is perfect, everything we wanted and more (more on that later).

The sellers realtor met us at the house and told us she had an offer but would wait for ours if we wanted to offer. Which we did of course! So we went back to the office on Sunday night to write a contract, knowing we were in competition for the house. Through some very intense and nerve wracking negotiating, we ended up leaving Matt's office near 11pm after walking away from the wants/needs of the seller.

I thought we were walking away from this home.

I was wrong.

Last night we got a message from the seller's realtor saying they wanted to work with our offer. However, they didn't like the pre-approval loan letter we had and it was all our bank could give us without actually applying for a loan which would take longer than the noon Tuesday deadline the seller had given us to supply this.

We found a lender last night at 8pm who would give us an approval and they verbally accepted our offer last night!!!

I was still nervous though because we had no written ratified contract. After waiting all morning, I just received word about 15 minutes ago that the house indeed is ours.

I'm still just shocked that 48 hours ago we hadn't even heard of this house and it is to be our home in just 30 days. We close on August 14.

This is where my request of Jay comes in and it is amazing that God listens to our 'little' requests and, I think, has a great sense of humor. The night before we moved to his parents, I told him I needed an end date, a date we would give up looking for homes and make arrangements to rent again.

Do you know what that date was?

August 15.

Amazing.

More details to come. Pray the rest of the process goes smoothly and without bumps!