Miracle

Our offer for the house next door to Ben's parents was accepted yesterday.

Here is what God does:

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

2.) He caused Ben's grandfather in Pennsylvania to really want a son to leave an inheritance to - it was his biggest goal in life. Since he didn't have a son, he considered Ben "his boy" and always wanted to leave him a big inheritance.

3.) In 2008, he caused Ben to lose all the money he had saved and invested and was considering buying a house with. That's what made Ben really look for God, because he realized he needed something real to base his life on instead of things that vanish.

4.) He caused me to meet a highschool friend of Ben's through the Raising Godly tomatoes website - 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.

7.) God caused Ben's mom 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.

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 the money from Grandpa Wilfred's inheritance to buy a house and have Grandma live with us. This would take care of Ben's grandma, Ben's parents (since this would make taking care of Grandma much easier), and us.

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 next door to try to sell her house way, way too high a few years ago so in the end she rented it instead of selling it. Then he caused a friend to suggest we contact the owners of the houses on either side and see if anyone was interested in selling. The house was not on the market when we called the lady 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 in that house next door was up.

12.) He caused the tenant - who'd placed a clause in the lease that he'd have 30 days notice and 6 months to look for a new place if the house got sold - to take his children to a private school this year and suddenly decide he wanted to break the lease a little early because he really wanted to get a house closer to the kids' school.

13.) He caused the owner of the house to decide to accept our offer without counter-offering at all. She accepted all conditions. She is selling the house to us for less than half of what she asked for it two years ago.

I think it was Bill Gothard who said that the definition of a miracle is "an otherwise ordinary occurrence with specific timing designed to glorify God."

Last night at dinner, Ben's dad - who is a man who believes more in being a decent person than a Godly one - said, "God really arranged this whole thing perfectly, didn't he?"

Our new house is therefore...a miracle.