What God Does

Our offer on the house at 36700 Theodore was accepted Sunday afternoon.
Here is what God does:

1.) He caused my parents to meet a very wise man who imparted a philosophy to my parents that it is good for families to stay together.  My parents raised me believing that the strength of living right by and with each other is a good and wonderful thing.

2.) He caused Ben's Grandpa Wilfred in Pennsylvania to really want to be able to leave a legacy to his family, so he worked hard to create that legacy.

3.) In 2008, he caused Ben to lose much of the money he had saved and invested and was considering buying a house with.  That's what made Ben really look for God; and it also prevented him from buying a  house of his own.

4.) He caused me to meet a highschool friend of Ben's through a website run by a friend of mine - a really unlikely event, when you come down to it. 

5.) He caused Emily to think of her friend Ben every time she saw me; and to think of me every time she saw Ben.  Because we came from such different families, she thought it was a silly thing to think and tried to ignore it, but the idea kept poking at her until she finally mentioned it to both of us.

6.) He caused Ben and I to begin talking to each other the exact time his grandfather in Pennsylvania died and Grandma Lila needed to move to Michigan.  The legacy Grandpa Wilfred had left began caring for her at assisted living near to the Turner's, but Grandma was lonely even with many visits and Mom Turner spent much of her time going back and forth to keep her mom company.

7.) God caused Mom Turner to think for years that the best way to take care of her parents was to get the house next door and have them live there with Ben.  We didn’t have to convince her this would work: she thought it would be good all along.  And that is a very, very rare thing in our culture.

8.) He caused Ben's parents, my parents, and us to think it would be a brilliant idea for us to get married and use some of Grandpa Wilfred's legacy to buy a house and have Grandma live with us.  This would take care of all of us - Grandma Lila, the Turners, and us - wonderfully well.

9.) He took away every single opportunity to get a house in Ben's parents' neighborhood - there were only a few houses for sale and all of them would immediately go off the market as soon as we looked at them.  Including a few that had been available for quite a while.

10.) He caused the lady who owned the home next door to try to sell her house for a little too much money a few years ago so in the end she rented it instead of selling it.  If she had sold it then it would be very unlikely we could’ve purchased it just now.  The house was not on the market when we called the owner up and offered to buy it!

11.) He caused us to need a house exactly a month after the year-long lease with the tenant family in that house next door was up.  And he caused us to call and inquire about purchasing the house just at a time when the owner was very happy to have someone willing to buy it.

12.) He caused the family living in the house to take their children private school this year and come to the decision they wanted to move closer to that school.

13.) He caused the owner of the house to decide to accept our offer.

Four years ago, before Ben had come to know God, before Grandma Lila was ready to move to Michigan, while I was just getting to know Emily, before it was ever a question of Ben and I meeting....God saved this house just for us.  It's purchase fulfills Grandpa Wilfred's deep desire to leave a legacy to his family, because in the end it will only take a portion of his savings to provide for his wife, his daughter, his grandson, and all the family involved.

I once read somewhere that a miracle could be defined as “an otherwise normal occurrence with specific timing that brings glory to God.”  Last night at dinner, Dad Turner said, “God really arranged this just perfectly, didn’t he?”

Therefore, our new home is...a miracle.