“You’ll like this one,” her husband told her.

She wasn’t so sure. House hunting had turned out to be more time consuming and exhausting than she had expected. Between her job and her kids, she could barely squeeze in the time that looking at houses took. And, as much as she wanted to move out of their cramped trailer, she just wasn’t happy with the houses she had seen in their price range. So she had turned the bulk of the house hunting over to her husband. He and the realtor had already spent countless hours searching and touring houses – back when it all had to be done in person – and only involved her when they needed her opinion on the more promising ones.

“Actually, there are two houses, so if you don’t like the first one, we can go look at the second one,” her husband told her as they dropped off their kids with his mom and headed across town.

“Oh,” he added. “They are both a bit over our price range, but I think we can swing it.”

She turned to him. “How much over?”

 

“Don’t worry,” he responded. “It’s not that much.”

“How much?” she asked again.

“$150,000.”

“That’s not a little bit! We agreed we couldn’t go over $100,000!” She frowned. “This is a waste of time.”  What was he thinking? They were already counting pennies each month with the mortgage they were paying now. How in the world could they afford something that would be so much more?

“Let’s just go look at them for comparison. I really like them.”

Sure enough, the first house was so much better than any other house she had looked at. It had all the features she wanted, including a room upstairs that she could make into her private retreat. Then they went to look at the second house. As they pulled their minivan into the double driveway, she looked at the large two story brick front house and thought, “No way!”

Walking in the front door, she was blown away with the balcony overlooking the entryway and living room, and the large open floor plan. White walls were a welcome contrast to the dark paneling in their trailer, and there were large windows everywhere, including the floor to ceiling bay window in the living room.

“I love it,” she told her husband.”I could definitely be happy living here. But we can’t afford it.”

 

“We’ll see,” her husband said.

As they backed out of the driveway, she told him to stop for a minute so she could take a picture of it like she had done with the previous houses. She pushed the button on the door to roll down the window, stuck the camera out into the darkening winter air, snapped a picture, then pushed the button to raise the window. Only the window wouldn’t go up. She tried several times, then turned to her husband.

“It won’t go back up,” she said in frustration.

“Don’t worry. I’ll check it out. It’ll be too dark by the time we get home so I’ll look at it tomorrow.”

She worried anyway. All the way home, shivering as the cold air from the open window blew over her, she worried about how much it would cost to fix it, and where they would get that money.

 

“Don’t worry, he told her again. “God will provide. Besides, it will probably be fine in the morning.”

 

He was right. In the morning, the window worked fine.

“It’s a sign from God,” he said.

The following Sunday they asked some friends to pray with them about the house. Should they let it go and stick to their price range like she thought? Or should they buy this house and trust God to provide the mortgage payments like her husband thought?

During the prayer, one of the friends said they believed the minivan window being stuck open was a sign from God, that He was giving them an open door – in this case, and open window – to the house even though it was way more expensive than she thought they could afford. “Trust God,” the friend said.

“See, I told you,” her husband told her.

So feeling she was walking on and would probably end up drowning in deep water, she signed the papers along with her husband, and moved into the house of her dreams.

Month after month God did provide although she couldn’t figure out how. Looking at their finances on paper, there was no way they should be able to make the payments. Yet they always did. She felt like she was living in an ongoing miracle!

Over the years, she would frequently stop and look around at the house – this gift from Him – and her heart would fill with gratitude to the amazing God who not only gave her more than she could have imagined, but gave it to her in such an amazing way!

P.S. For the rest of its life, that minivan window never got stuck again.