Selling our house - an exercise in faith

As of today our Island Bay home is sold!

I got to live my dream of being a home owner for nine months and I learned a lot in the process. Especially about house painting! (Read the story of our renovations here: Bathroom, Girls' bedroom, Home office, Kitchen, dining room and lounge, Master bedroom, plus my tips on 10 useful house painting tools.)

I also got valuable experience in trusting God with big things. It was scary moving up to Auckland before our Wellington house was sold, but trusting in God made it A LOT easier.

After Paul accepted his new job in Auckland, we put our house on the market - opting to do all the work ourselves instead of going through an agent.

We ran three open homes and showed a lot of other people through the house. I didn't get a special feeling about any of these people, and nothing seemed to come of those showings.

Paul went off to China for three weeks, I took the girls to the South Island to visit family while he was away and we agreed we would sign the house up with an agent when we got back.

However, while I was away I received a phone call from a woman wanting to view our house. I told her we were away but could show her through on our return.

She called again after we were back and I organised for Paul to show her through the house while I was dropping L at Kindy one day. I was considering going to the supermarket after the Kindy drop-off, but then I got this nudge from God that I needed to get back to the house to meet her.

I headed directly home and arrived just as Paul was finishing up his tour. It turned out the woman was one of my midwives. I hadn't connected her name and voice on the phone with the midwife I had met in clinic a couple of times.

From there, everything started to fall into place. She was keen on our house but wanted to show her husband through to get his opinion. She also had to sell her own house, and was putting it on the market the following week.

I was heading to Auckland for a couple of weeks to get a feel for where we wanted to live and to hang out with Paul, who was already working up there.

Because I knew my midwife, I felt happy leaving a key out for her while I was away so she could show her husband through the house and he could do a builders' report (her husband is a builder).

Her husband liked the house so she put in a conditional offer and we agreed on a price. Then it was a waiting game, to see whether her house would sell before her offer on ours expired.

For me, it felt like God had it all in hand and everything coming was just a ticking of boxes. I really felt His peace around the whole process, in a way I've only felt it a couple of times in my life before.

In the meantime, during what was only meant to be a holiday in Auckland, Paul and I signed up for a house to rent. The house is only a five minute walk to Paul's work. It cost a bit more than we had planned on spending, but we decided to take the hit to give us more time with Paul and save on buying a second car.

We are so glad we made that decision, because Paul's work is busy and the girls probably wouldn't see him before bed-time during the week if he was commuting to and from work. As it is, he gets to be home for lunch and dinner most days.

I've already told you about flying down to Wellington with my sister-in-law to pack up the house. While I was there, I signed the Sale and Purchase Agreement with our buyer.

A few days later, our buyer contacted me to say she had accepted an offer on her house. That was good news!

Then some big earthquakes struck Wellington and looked like they would impact our house sale. Insurance companies were refusing to take on new clients and banks only give out home loans for insured homes. I gave our buyer our home insurance company details and she managed to negotiate with them to take her on since the actual house was already insured by them. Whew!

More waiting ensued, as all the conditions on her house sale needed to be met. I still wasn't worried because I had that feeling from God that our house was meant to be hers.

She met all the conditions on her house sale and suddenly things sped up, with her asking to bring settlement forward by a couple of weeks. The new settlement date was today!

Everything went smoothly today, so now I'm getting my head around the fact that we've actually sold our house.

Hurray! I'm so grateful to God for being my source of peace during this stressful time.

Farewell my home!