Day 14

It's our 14th day in contract and we have had pretty smooth sailing so far. Not because it was easy, but because when presented with a roadblock, God simply moved it out of our way and made our path straight again. It's amazing seeing and experiencing first hand the power of prayer.
There were 2 big road blocks that could have killed the entire process in a heartbeat.
1) The appraisal.
We agreed with the seller upon a specific price in the contract agreement. The agreement states that the amount to be loaned to us is dependent on the appraised value of the home. In other words, the bank will not give us more money than they say the home is worth. For them it's a risk they won't take.
So if the home appraised for higher than our offer amount, the bank would have no problem loaning us the funds, but may make the seller think twice and want to renegotiate. If it appraises for less, then the bank will only give us that amount and if we want to take the risk, the remainder of the amount agreed is on us, which could be anywhere from $1000 to $15,000. This could kill our deal.
We asked for our friends and family to pray with us that the house would appraise for what we offered so to avoid any of these further complications.
A few days later, the appraisal was in. It had appraised for EXACTLY the amount we prayed for. Praise God! That was amazing.

Then came 2) FHA loan requirements
FHA is pretty stickler about the terms by which they give out loans. One of those terms is that the house in question has to be listed for a certain period of time to be considered for this type of loan. Due to the situation that this round is technically a For Sale By Owner and that it was not listed in order to save the seller the 3% listing fee, our house on Opal Crest does not meet this criteria at this stage. If the Underwriter says that this cannot qualify because it doesn't meet this contingency, the deal is over. No loan. No house.
Again we gathered our friends and family in prayer.
The next day we heard back from the underwriter.
Because of our unique situation, and that we were in contract already when the house was listed in April, and because of all the garbage we've had to go through to even try to buy this home, the underwriter decided that she was totally fine with our history on this property and that there would be an exception to this rule just for us. :)

I feel like God really wants us here. He keeps manifesting His power by continually breaking down these huge walls and making the impossible happen. I mean, the chances of all of these crazy details happening by chance?? There's no way.
We keep finding that if one thing had happened only slightly differently, we would have no chance. We had to go through a 4 month short sale and losing the home to a foreclosure auction to have even had the opportunity to make a deal by this time of the year. If we hadn't we still might not have known where we were going to be.

It's so crazy, that even though we may have more roadblocks to come, my faith that God has our best at heart reminds me to look at all he's done and not to worry about a thing. He's in control. He's got it. All I have to do is trust.