As promised in https://www.providential-life.com/p/learning-to-trust-god-s-timing-for-our-family, I wanted to share how we ended up in our house.

Shortly after we were married, my husband transitioned out of the Marine Corps and was starting a new job outside of Quantico, VA. This area has a high cost of living; we decided to rent a house before deciding to buy, so we could get a feel for the area. We found a nice home north of the river and lived there a year. We had put some money into the home because we hoped to stay there long-term. By the end of our lease, we decided: Why move? Let's just buy this house.

It seemed like the obvious answer.

Except it wasn't.

We would've offered what the sellers were asking, but the appraisal came back lower. Our VA loan wouldn't let us offer above the appraisal amount, so we offered that, but they said no. They said they would continue renting it out until they could sell it for more.

We did not want to rent another year, so that left us looking for a new place. We had been casually looking the entire year, but didn't find anything we wanted more than what we already had.

We got a new realtor and continued our house hunt.

She was very helpful. She found a house we actually agreed on. It checked most of the boxes: great carpet, our ideal neighborhood, right amount of space, privacy, nice floors, even one of my oddly specific requirements: no stairs blocking the front door, etc.

It was almost perfect.

The problem? It was a short sale, which means the lender agreed to accept less than what is owed on the mortgage, so we would have to deal with the lender and not the seller.

We made an offer to the bank, but for much less than they were asking. It had been on the market for over a year, so we thought they may accept it or be willing to negotiate.

We were wrong.

We kept the house as a backup since we knew how much the bank wanted for it, plus it was ALMOST perfect.

We thought, maybe we should build a new home!

Our focus shifted to searching for home builders.

We spoke to several builders and toured home after home. Trying to find something that my husband and I agreed on and that checked all the boxes was almost impossible, but…

We finally found the perfect layout for us!

The home had an open concept, curved staircase with high ceilings, the right amount of bedrooms and bathrooms, plus a sunroom! We spoke to the builder and tried to find the right location.

Neighborhood after neighborhood wasn't right.

We did research on building versus buying a pre-owned home, and buying pre-owned was cheaper and had fewer headaches…picking out all the finishes and paint colors and add-ons and settlement cracks and on and on.

If it took us this long to decide on a floorplan, how long would the rest of those decisions take?

Then we got an eviction notice.

We had been living in the same house, past our year lease. We had been trying to make these decisions on borrowed time. We were four months past our lease date, still paying rent, and they gave us two months to get out.

Now we were in a time crunch. It would be almost impossible to find a new home in that amount of time. Definitely impossible to build a new home in that amount of time. I prayed God would open something up for us.

We remembered that perfect neighborhood and the short sale house. Two months would be pushing it, but we knew the bank would accept a higher offer and it was STILL available! We could make it work.

We called the realtor to take us back to the house to look at it one more time to be sure it was what we wanted.

While we were there, our blessed realtor told us there was one more house she wanted to show us that just got listed, For Sale by Owner, the day before. So, we decided it couldn't hurt to look at one last house…especially because sales by owners could move quickly.

She drove us a couple streets away, in the same neighborhood. We pulled up and it was the cutest house on the outside…white with black shutters.

But the surprise came when we walked through the front door.

The high ceilings.

The curved staircase.

The open concept floorplan and sunroom.

It was the exact floorplan we had chosen for our builder. It was the layout we had agreed on, but didn't have time to build- and it was in the right neighborhood.

We did a quick house tour and immediately put an offer in. They accepted right away and we closed within a month.

If any of those other houses had worked out, it wouldn't have been the perfect home for us.

At the time, every closed door felt like a setback. The house we were renting didn’t work out. The short sale didn’t work out. Building didn’t work out. Then suddenly, when we were almost out of time, the home we had been trying to create for ourselves was already there—waiting for us.

Looking back, I can see God's providence in every closed door. At the time, we didn't understand why the other houses weren't working out or why building our own home seemed impossible. We couldn't see what God already knew: the home we were trying so hard to find was about to become available.

We just had to wait for His timing.

Sometimes God’s “no” isn’t a rejection. Sometimes it’s His protection from settling for something good when He knows what is coming next. We couldn’t see how all those disappointments were working together, but God could.

God’s timing really is perfect!