Monday, September 5, 2022 A Year at Providence Place

I decided to call my book “A Year at Providence Place,” and have finished the first page. Off to a good start – hope I can keep it up!

We’ve used the name “Providence” for our homes since back in 1994, so an explanation is in order. We had twins in 1993, which made our 2-bedroom house rather squeezy, having doubled the number of children in it. We put the house up for sale that year with the realtor who’d sold it to us and waited. And waited. And waited. We prayed, our friends prayed. In 6 months time only one person even looked at the house, and this was not during a time of a particularly depressed housing market. Meanwhile, we’d been looking at houses to buy and found several that we would love to have bought, but didn’t feel comfortable making a contingency offer with the almost complete lack of interest in our current house. We took the house off the market.

Early in 1994 we found out about a house out in the country that was for sale by owner. It was a large 4-bedroom farmhouse only a mile from where Kris worked and was on 3 acres with a machine shed, numerous fruit trees of various kinds, grape vines, etc. An elderly lady was selling the house because it was getting to be too much for her to take care of. This house hadn’t even hit the market yet and she had people lining up to buy it. We made an appointment with the owner, Virginia, to look at the house and brought the four boys with us. The house was lovely, though outdated on the inside (avocado green counters in the kitchen with orange/green carpeting in the same!). However, all the wood framing and doors were solid oak – native timber! – and the living room had a small stained glass window in it. We prayed that we might be able to buy this house, but had a several hurdles to overcome:
1. We had to compete with other buyers already
2. We hadn’t even put our own house up for sale yet
3. We had a strong policy of not buying a house before selling our current one and with the competition, we’d not be able to make a contingency offer.

We talked to our pastor, a very savvy man in the real estate market, and one whose spiritual wisdom we trusted. “We shouldn’t buy this house before selling our current house, right?” we asked him. We knew the answer already. It’s just a bad idea all around and especially with the history we’d had with trying to sell the house. “I recommend that you make an offer immediately,” was his surprising answer. Well! Okay then! We hired a different realtor right away and made another appointment to meet with Virginia. We sat at her table and told her we’d like to buy her house and made an offer. She smiled broadly and told us that although she had lots of interest in the house, she liked the idea of a big family living there and the amount we offered her was exactly what she had hoped to sell it for. She said yes. We were exhilarated! And yet…what have we done? We got our 2-bedroom house on the market in record time and it sold in two weeks to cash buyers, so there would be no delay waiting for loan papers, etc. It was an amazing providence from God, who is able to give exceeding abundantly beyond what we can ask or think. Looking back, we could see that His timing was perfect and His answers to our earlier prayers to sell the house were perfect as well. He knew when this house would hit the market. We moved into the house and dubbed it “Providence.” We started homeschooling the same year and called our school “Providence Academy.”

Four years later we found out that we were going to be moving back to our home soil in Minnesota. We looked at houses in the town to which we’d be moving and found a wonderful, roomy house with a cheerful red door right across the street from a state park. We made a contingent offer, confident that our house in Indiana would sell speedily, and I took a whole roll of photos of the house we’d be moving into so we could show family and friends. We went back to Indiana, hired our former realtor and put the house up for sale. And waited. And waited. We prayed, our friends prayed. Our house which had been a hot property four years ago was just sitting there. Was our asking price too high? We had trusted our realtor on that. Three months went by and though we had reduced our asking price, our contingency offer expired. I still remember the day I took once last look at the photos of that beautiful house and then threw them away. This was evidently not the house that the Lord wanted for us, and we knew Him to be a perfect Realtor, so I surrendered, but definitely with a small sigh of regret. 🙂

Another couple of months went by and we finally had an offer on our house. We made plans to go back to Minnesota to look for another house and then found out that I was expecting baby #6. Feeling sick and exhausted all day, I backed out of the house-hunting trip. I still remember talking to my husband on the phone each night while he was there, discussing the houses he’d seen that day. One house rose above the rest as we talked – for sale by owners, nice neighborhood, 4 bedrooms, laundry room up by the bedrooms instead of in the basement, nice kitchen, lots of beautiful natural woodwork, even a workshop in the basement! Kris sat down at their table with them and made an offer. They said yes. This house had not been available when we’d been in town all those months ago. We moved in and realized that in many ways, this house was actually better for our family than the original house we’d wanted. But the icing on the cake came a few months later when we met the couple that bought that house up by the state park. They found out after they moved in that the roof had some structural issues that they had to pay $10,000 to repair. They were able to afford that, but it would have been a real hardship for us. The Lord had kindly spared us from a bad decision and provided a house that cost less and was so much better for us. Providence – amazing, bountiful, merciful providence.

So now you know!

I’ll probably pray about deleting this in the morning.