A House Story

 

A House Story

This story was told to me by good friends who we first met back during our days in Scotland. God has brought us together again more closely in recent years. I'm very thankful for that. They're great people and strong followers of Christ. I'm also inspired and encouraged when I talk with them. Fellowship with other believers does that for us as does sharing our faith experiences. Here's just one example of God's intervention in their lives.

 

                                                                                                                                                                        Photo by Phil Hearing on Unsplash

In the early 1990’s it was a very bad economy in Massachusetts and my husband, Mike lost his job. In fact, there were four couples in our close group of friends and three of the four guys lost their jobs within weeks of each other. That’s the kind of economy it was.

 

There really were no jobs there, so we decided to move with our two young boys to Maryland to be near some of Mike’s family. In fact, we moved in with his brother, in a small ranch house. I took care of their baby to help out while Mike looked for a job. The house was so small we couldn’t fit twin beds into our boys’ bedroom, so they slept on mattresses while we were there.

 

Well, Mike got a job and we immediately started looking around for a place of our own to live. Mike qualified for an Army/VA mortgage and we were approved for about $195,000, our absolute limit. That would have been fine in Massachusetts but, houses were way more expensive in Maryland.

 

While we were there, once a week I would have the car and I would take the baby out and drive around exploring, looking for parks and places to be outside. One day I found this wonderful park and told Mike when I got home, “I found this great park. It would be really nice if we could find a house near it.” Unfortunately, I didn’t know the area well and after that I couldn’t find it again.

 

I was looking around and saw this house and we went to look at it. There was a For Sale by Owner sign. When we went in there was a woman in the living room and there was a carpet on the floor and a rocking chair and that was it. The rest of the house was bare. She told us to take a look around. As I went around I opened up a cabinet in the kitchen and it was empty except for a Bible verse written on an index card taped in there. I thought that’s kind of unusual, but kind of nice. I read it and put it back. As I went around and opened more cabinets, I kept finding more verses.

 

I finally decided I’m going to say something. I introduced myself and told her I just got a job teaching at Washington Christian School. She was visibly excited. “We’re Christians too. And we live just around the corner. I’m just acting as an agent for the owner of this house because she had a really bad experience with realtors. I’ve been coming over here every morning and kneeling on this carpet and praying, 'God send a Christian family to this house.'”

 

The price was $215,000. Way over what we had been okayed for, but she told us to think about it. We went home and talked it over and decided to put in an offer. Soon after, the owner called us from Texas. She asked a bunch of questions and we explained our situation. She kept saying, “I could work with that.”

 

It turns out the house had been empty for two years. She had only had one sister who had passed away from cancer, her parents had passed away, she had no family left, and this was the last thing that attached her to her family, so she hadn’t been eager to sell it. But now it had come to the point where she was ready. We talked back and forth multiple times, and she agreed to lower the price, not to $195,000, but we began to work along those lines when a few weeks later she called again and said,  “I feel so bad to have to tell you this, but someone put in a full price offer.”

 

I told her, “You need to take that. Because we can’t give you that money. You need to do what’s best for you.” I could tell she felt really bad about it.

 

We wrote her a thank-you note saying thanks for giving us hope. It made me believe that somebody will work with us and we’re grateful.  We kept looking. Some time went by and we never really found anything that we liked quite as much. Then we received another call from her. “Have you bought a house?” she asked.

 

When we told her we hadn’t she said, “If you’re still interested in my parents’ house you can have it. Those other people were so demanding I thought I just can’t have them in my family’s house. I’m going to sell it to you at a price you can afford.”

 

“That’s wonderful, but we can’t close right away. We have to save up for a down payment. Probably not till spring.”

 

“That’s all right, we can do it then,” she responded.

 

I was amazed and offered, “We’ll make sure we take care of it till we move in in the spring. We’ll shovel it out and sweep and keep it neat.”

 

“No, you can move in.”

 

“We can’t. We don’t have the money.”

 

“No, I mean for free.”

 

Stunned, I blurted, “You can’t do that.”

 

“I can do anything I want. It’s my house. I want you to move in right away. And we’ll close in the spring.”

 

And we never met her, but we closed in April and she actually paid all our closing costs. When we finally put all the money on the table at the closing, we didn’t even have enough left to go out to dinner to celebrate. We were counting pennies. That’s how tight it was.

 

So, we’ve been in this house now for 26 years. Our boys grew up here and now Mike’s mom is with us. It’s been a great house.

 

And that park I liked so much? It turns out it’s four doors down from our house.

 Krystal N.