“Behold, I will do a new thing, Now
it shall spring forth; Shall you not know it? I will even make a road in the wilderness and
rivers in the desert.” (Isaiah 43:19.)
"In that
I command you today to love the LORD your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep
His commandments, His statutes, and His judgments, that
you may live and multiply; and the LORD your God will bless you in the land
which you go to
possess."
(Deuteronomy 30:16)
Feeling led by
the Lord to downsize and move to the coast is one thing. Figuring out how to do
that is quite another. But you know a vision is from the Lord when unexpected
miracles begin to happen to make that vision a reality.
The first
miracle had actually already happened. A year or so earlier we had finally
decided to bite the financial bullet and renovate both our kitchen and bathroom
/ laundry area after years of thinking about it. What we didn't realise at the
time is that not only did it make our place more sellable but it made it
sellable at about the same price we could by a unit on the coast. We thought we
were investing in our house. We were actually investing in our future home.
Therefore it was a total surprise when we asked a real estate agent to value
our place and he came back with a figure much higher than we thought possible.
One that made a move to the coast within our financial reach with a small loan
from the bank.
Only later did
we appreciate the perfect timing of the Lord. Having a brand new kitchen and
bathroom / laundry areas our house would only lose relative value the older
they got and the older we got the harder it would be to get a loan. It was a
now or never time to move for us and the Lord had chosen this very time to show
us a way forward through a door that would also soon close.
Now selling and
buying a home when you need the proceeds from the one you sell in order to buy
the other one is tricky at the best of times. It is increased a hundredfold
when you have MCS. The place you own is the only safe place you have to live at
the time. Your new place not only has to be available at the right price and
time, it also has to be one of the few that will not make you sick. And the
only way to find that out is go and spend as long as possible walking around in
it and in the streets around it.
To make matters
even more difficult we have a dog and not all unit and townhouse complexes on
the coast are pet friendly we discovered. But even here the Lord had already
gone before us. A very recent court ruling now makes it almost impossible for
Body Corporates to prohibit owner occupiers from having small dogs under 10 Kg.
Not only is our dog 7.8 kg but the place the Lord eventually led us to is one
of the pet friendly ones.
So with much
prayer and seeking after the will of the Lord we put our house on the market
and began a string of visits to the coast, unit hunting. Apart from learning
that a lot of townhouses and units and even locations are not safe even near
the coast the other lesson you quickly learn is that in the eyes of real estate
agents you may as well not exist until your current house is under contract.
Until then you are just a browser, not a buyer. Unless you already have a 6
digit bank balance (in black, not in red) and a better than average chance of a
loan approval for any shortfall no seller is going to seriously consider
entering into a contract with you.
This is where we
really began to gain an even deeper appreciation of what it means to take a
step of faith with the Lord. We had no option but to enter into a binding contract
to sell our home before we could even begin to secure a new safe place to live.
We faced the very real possibility of being homeless for an unknown length of
time with nowhere for me to stay. But it was the step we believed the Lord
wanted us to take so we pulled a Nike and just did it.
Selling a house
is fun and exciting ..... for about a week. After that it is just an ongoing
grueling task of decluttering, downsizing and prepacking whilst endlessly
keeping the house and yard spick and span and inspection ready for prospective
buyers, while still regularly taking seven hour round trips to the coast to
look at properties.
Our real estate
agent put a surprisingly good value on our house and land but a small, quiet
voice kept telling us to drop the price a little to a certain figure, so we
did. The housing market where we were was extremely sluggish with some places
being on the market for months on end and some over a year. Our 25 year old
house (give or take) was not the best or most modern on the market but the
wisdom of that small quiet voice prevailed. Our house was under contract in
about 6 weeks. But come settlement day a mere 6 weeks later we would be
homeless unless we could secure a safe place down on the coast we could move
to.
On a previous visit
to the coast we had driven across a small bridge near the beach and an
overwhelming feeling came over me that this was the place we were meant to be.
It turned out that our future home was on the very next block but we took a
very long complicated path to get there. We looked at many places. Some were
very, very nice but unaffordable. Some were very affordable but unlivable
without major renovations. Some made me very, very ill. But there was a very
small number in the "Goldilocks zone" (just right).
This was where
we learned a whole new aspect of how the Lord leads his people. Like the good
shepherd He is, sometimes He leads from the front. Going ahead of us as we
follow in His footsteps. But there are times when He leads from beside and
behind. Gently preventing us from straying this way or that from the path He
has laid out before us. Encompassing us about with love and preventing us from
wandering off or being led astray.
We seriously
considered several units where I did not appear to be affected but there always
seem to be something to prevent us from purchasing. Some we put offers on only
to have them declined. Some sold before we could make an offer. At one point we
even entered a contract to purchase a 3 bedroom townhouse in a nearby suburb that
we thought the Lord had led us to but it fell through on a very bad building
inspection report. But that left us with just one month exactly to find and buy
a new place before we became homeless. The Lord had a place set aside for us
and was ensuring that we did not end up anywhere but there even though we were
rapidly running out of time to find it and secure it.
So we began a
new search for the place we knew the Lord had set aside for us - if only we
could find it. Settlement on our existing home was due 6th June and on 7th May
we once more made the 7 hour round trip to the coast with a worryingly short
list of properties to inspect. One place not on that list is the place we now
live in. We had seen it on realestate.com.au several times but had always
dismissed it based on the floor plan included in the listing. It simply did not
look big enough. But we did have on the list another unit in the same complex.
It was the very last property on our woefully short list. We did not know at
the time that all the units in the complex have the same basic floor plan and
were all of a similar size.
When we got
there we liked the layout, the size, the location, and the look of the fully
refurbished unit on the list. We made an offer only to be told that the unit
was actually already under contract to another buyer. But then we recognised the
layout of the unit. It was the exact same layout as the one we had dismissed so
many times. We pulled out our smart phones and not only was the other one still
on the market but the price had been recently dropped to be considerably lower
than the unit we were inspecting. So while at the complex we phoned the estate
agent handling the other unit and about 15 minutes later we were inspecting it.
It was exactly what we had been looking for in the exact location we had hoped
for and while it needed some refurbishing the savings on the price neatly
covered the cost of most of the more important renovations. What is more I had
no reactions at all to the unit or the complex around it. By 12th May we had a
contract on the unit a mere 25 days before we had to move out of the only safe
place I had to live. In addition the unit was vacant and we were able to
arrange simultaneous settlements on the 6th June. But it still had to pass the
building and pest inspections and we still needed a loan from the bank. It passed
all inspections with flying colours and the bank was happy to approve a loan in
14 days instead of the usual 21 days. Equally miraculously it worked out after
all the buying and selling negotiations involved in both sales that the
difference between the selling price of our existing house and the purchase
price of the new place was a mere $1,500. Almost a straight swap over.
From facing the
very real likelihood of homelessness we ended up walking out of our old home
and straight into our new home just one block from the bridge where weeks
earlier I had the overwhelming conviction that this was the place the Lord
wanted us to be.
But the miracles
did not end there and what happened next was beyond our wildest expectations.
But that is for the next episode. Lord willing I will be back soon to tell you
all about it.
With love from
Christ in Islandbard.
#smallgiftsministries
#ttpagoTLa
