Walk by Faith

Jeremy Camp's song Walk by Faith came on the radio during my drive home today. It's a cold, rainy day. It's also a season of remembering life a year ago.

One year ago today (Thursday), we were here in Ohio. We had spent a good deal of the week looking at houses. Ours in KC had a contract and my husband was expected to be moved and start work here by the first week of May.

The house we found was the last one we looked at and probably the last possible one for sale in the county. It had been on the market for one day when we first looked. It was a bit cluttered, but had everything we wanted.

We (really me) wanted a large kitchen, separate dining room, large bedroom, fenced yard and an outbuilding or basement. It was one of three houses that had everything. It was the only one without a basement. It was also the one we both easily agreed on. Our other two houses were about the same in size, but in two completely different places. One was in town and the other was at the lake.

Realistically, the house was priced below what it should have appraised at. We'd later find out different because the previous owners trashed the house after they had the contract. I've covered all that before. We got a mess!

Anyway....

We had made it through the inspection process on our KC house and were as comfortable as we could be at the time. So, we made an offer on this house and it was accepted. About an hour before we met with our agent here, we got word that the buyer on our KC house was having second thoughts and may ask for an amendment on the contract. Our agents assured us everything would be fine and we should move forward with the contract here.

The next day, we heard from the agent here that our offer was accepted. An hour later, we heard from the KC agent that we'd lost the contract on our home there.

The buyer had decided he wanted $10,000 off the price of the house. Without consulting us first, one of our agents said absolutely not and refused to negotiate. In addition, our agent acted completely inappropriately on our behalf, cussing out the buyer and his agents.

I was angry, frustrated and scared. The financial complications didn't scare me as much as the idea of being stuck 600 miles away from husband come May. I was also determined. I remember saying to my husband over and over that we had to continue walking by faith. We had to believe that God had a plan and this was all part of it.

There were times in the days following that I fell to my knees, begging God to strengthen my faith in Him. I didn't need to control this and didn't need to know how it was all to happen. I listened to that song and many others over and over. I'd sing them in the shower and blast them in the car during the hours we waited on potential buyers to walk through the house.

It didn't take long. We had another contract on the house within 5 days. That ended up being another mess after our move. That contract fell apart because of a failed contingency. We fired agents, hired a new agent. Our new agent took over in early August and we closed on the house on September 8.

Those six months were hard, frustrating and long. They took us up to the brink of financial ruin. We spent a lot of time wrapped up in the emotions. In that time, I was incredibly sick. We prayed, a lot. We doubted our faith. We questioned what we had done wrong.

I'm so thankful for this blog and social media. They give me a picture of what things were really like. We lived in the daily emotion, but we were walking by faith. Our faith was growing. Each hurdle made us lean more and more on the sufficiency of God and not our own.

I hope that moving forward, I can remember that in everything, I must continue to walk by faith even when I cannot see.