207 Windsong ~ A GOD THING

Today we sold our first house, 207 Windsong.

It has been a great house. Our first date actually started in this house. Paul proposed to me in this house. We found out that we were pregnant with Grace in this house. We had my sister's surprise sweet sixteen birthday party in this house. I cooked my first Thanksgiving turkey in this house. We decorated our first tree in this house. We had home shows, parties, cookouts, fights, great laughs, good cries, friends, neighbors, family, and memories in this house.

It wasn't our plan to sell this house, but God had another plan.

Between all of Grace's testing, her emergency surgery, and the loss of Noah, it is safe to say that we had a lot of medical expenses that had racked up. Paul and I knew we needed to do something from a financial stand point to ease the strain on our wallet. For the past two years, we have rented our house in Greenville. We had a great management company and were able to keep the same renters in our house, and they have been great! We get in touch with a mortgage broker and spoke with both banks (for our Windsong house and for our current house in Raleigh) to see what our options were about refinancing. Before we made any decisions, Paul contacted our realtor in Greenville just to see what the current value of our house was and what the current market was like. He told Paul that he actually might have a buyer. What? The next day he informs us that the buying program has been halted. The investment company has bought over 200 houses this year alone and was on backlog. Bummer. We had already gotten our hopes up that this was the solution. But...our realtor was able to push us through! ~ A GOD THING.

The next day, we have a contract on our house. It was with an investment company that had already bought four other houses in our neighborhood. As with any house, an inspector came by to do the inspection. Now mind you, we have NOT planned on putting the house on the market. We have only seen the inside of the house once since we started renting it. We still had tenants, so we expected there to be a few minor things here and there. There were fourteen items on the list. Fourteen. One of said items; tear down and rebuild the deck. I'm sorry, what? The investment company wanted to back out. Our realtor was awesome, he asked the investment company to wait and let their contractor go through the house and see what he thought. Thankfully they agreed, and our realtor, his contractor, and the investment company's contractor went through the house together. They were able to take some of the items off of the list, including tearing down and rebuilding the deck. It just needed to be restained. Shew. ~ A GOD THING.

It just so happened that Paul was asked to go to Peru with our church from back home. ~ A GOD THING.

This brought us to Greenville. (Grace and I stayed with my Mom and visited with friends and family while he was gone.) Sunday after church and Paul's return from Peru, Paul and his brother Drew spent the afternoon working on the list inside the house; fix a few lights, tighten a few door knobs, fix some electrical wiring, those kind of things, while I pressure washed the entire deck. Monday, Paul and I spent the entire morning staining the deck. It was nice to see the house one last time and it was so rewarding to do the work ourselves (not to mention, it saved us a lot of money!) ~ A GOD THING.

Two weeks later, while at the beach with Paul's family, and after signing and faxing a few papers, our house was sold and the money was in our bank account. ~ A GOD THING.

We were able to get our equity out of our house in Greenville and use it to not only pay off all of our medical debt, but pay off our Pilot, rebuild our savings account, do a few things to our house here in Raleigh to add value to our house to hopefully allow us to drop our PMI, and buy a new-to-us car for Paul. Just when we thought we were in over our heads, God provided...He provided for us above and beyond.

We just had to trust Him.

It's A GOD THING.