In November dh and I began to reconsider moving to RBS, an idea we put aside last spring.  On Jan. 28, I consciously set an intention to be living in RBS by Pesach, two months later.  Considering that we hadn’t yet signed a purchase agreement on a home, this was an ambitious goal!

There have been a number of bumps in the roads, obstacles that made this vision of mine look highly unrealistic.  With each bump I kept holding on to my desire, reminding myself that while it would be impossible for me to accomplish this goal on my own, what are big obstacles to me are nothing to God.  There have been a lot of steps involved in holding on to my goal – it began with having the courage to admit to myself what I wanted, then having the courage to believe I could have it, and then continuing to believe it would will work out every time some new challenge made it seem impossible.

Remember I told you there were tenants living there and they had a contract to be there until the end of July?  About a month ago I was told that they found a place to move to and our new apartment would be vacant 2 – 4 weeks before we wanted to move in.  This was very exciting, it was the first of the three major pieces that needed to fall into place for us to move – and then those plans fell apart and ten days ago they told me they didn’t know when they would be able to find something else since it’s so hard to find rentals.

I kept holding on to my vision of moving before Pesach, picturing them finding an apartment that would suit their needs very soon.

Three days later, I called them and they told me they found something and would be moving a week later!  Today they moved out, less than a week before we want to move in.

On Thursday I spoke to my lawyer, who said due to a delay in some paperwork they were waiting for from the seller, it would be impossible to close the sale before our moving date.  It looked obvious that we had hit the brick wall at the end of the road.

But I didn’t give up – I still held onto my vision of moving at the end of March.  I decided to contact the sellers and ask them if they would consider letting us move in even if the contract wasn’t closed.  I trusted that whatever would they would say would be God’s answer to me.  If I wasn’t meant to move, it wouldn’t be because I gave up but because it was clear that was what was meant to happen.

While waiting to hear back from the sellers, I contacted our mortgage broker.  I had hoped to close within five weeks of the contract being signed, which is extremely fast for Israel.  Clearly with just two weeks to work with, he would need more time and I wanted to know how much more time he anticipated it would take.

I wasn’t prepared for his answer.  He told me he should be able to push our paperwork through by by Sunday (the day before we move), possibly even by this Thursday.  I already posted about him and told you he’s amazing but this puts him up in the miracle worker category, seriously.  I’ve never ever heard of anyone in this country being able to get their mortgage paperwork done in a week and a half.   I told him I didn’t see how he could do this so fast, and he said, “Well, you told me you scheduled the movers on Monday!”  God has many messengers.

Later that same day the sellers called me and said they’d be willing to let us move in before the sale was finalized if a few conditions were met (all of which we agreed to).  I told them this was our backup plan, not our first choice, and that if things go as expected the sale will be completed before we move.  They were very pleasant to deal with.  It’s a wonderful feeling to know that whatever happens, we can move forward as planned.

All of this happened yesterday and I’m so grateful to have this confirmation a full week before we move!  There’s been a lot of uncertainty.

This experience has been very powerful for me.  Once everything works out, it looks like it was a natural matter of course for things to fall into place as they did.  But when you’re on the other side, it doesn’t look like that at all.  A couple of days ago a friend said that when I told her I was planning to move to RBS for Pesach, she thought to herself, “She’s dreaming, it’s impossible!”

Someone else called me yesterday to tell me she hoped I wasn’t going to be too disappointed when nothing worked out the way that I wanted, that I was hoping for things that weren’t realistic and I needed to accept God’s will and timing.  I told her that this is all about me accepting God’s will and timing – instead of living down to my old ‘realistic’ expectations.

Miracles are happening!

Avivah