You see, in our history of moving we've never had an easy time. More often than not, the first house we would set out to buy would become encased in some sort of turmoil or other and we would end up buying a completely different house. This happened to us three times. The last time we moved, we did so because we had lost everything and were moving into a rental. Needless to say, God had mercy on us and there was no extra drama.
This time, however, we were buying again, and although we did not have a house to sell, I fully expected the experience to be like it had been in the past. I expected to find a house, fall in love with it, have something happen with the deal, lose the house and then find an even better one. After all, that's how it had been before.
But God had other plans. Let me backtrack a bit. For the past year +, I had been praying, along with many others, for Courtney Lenaburg and her family. In fact, it was just one year ago that she died. When she did, I cried along with everyone else. After her passing, I had read stories of her intercession, one in particular about a family who wanted to move but needed a miracle with their septic field. Through Courtney's intercession, that miracle occurred.
That got me thinking that maybe I should call upon Courtney to intercede for us in this move since I really didn't want to have to go through what we've been through in the past.
Can I tell you something? St. Courtney came through with flying colors. We began our search and had looked at a few houses when something (or someone :) nudged me back to the computer to look at the 90+ listings again. There I found it, the house we had overlooked the first time through. We went to see it and we loved it. We brought our kids (who, being older now, had some very definite opinions about what they were looking for). They loved it, too. We put in an offer and at first it didn't seem like we were going to come to terms with the seller, but I called on Courtney even more and before we knew it, the sellers came down in price and then started offering us their furniture...at no extra charge! We closed in 30 days! 30 days, people! With not one hitch.
Many times when miraculous things happen like this, I often find that God sends me a confirmation that what I am seeing is real. The moment this time was when we were at the closing (which only lasted about an hour) and our realtor said, "I don't think I've ever been at a closing that got funded that fast." From past experience, I know that that was God's way of telling me that I've witnessed something grand.
We moved into a great neighborhood. Having not had neighbors for 12 years, and having 7 children and 5 cars, we were a bit leery of what having neighbors might mean. Our neighbors are wonderful. Even funnier is the fact that in our small subdivision of about 33 homes, 95% of the people are Catholic. God has chosen a wonderful spot to reintroduce us into communal living.
I write this to let you know, in case you don't already, that there are many saints up there in heaven just waiting for us to call upon them for their help. There is no other explanation in my mind (based on our past experiences with moving) for how smoothly everything went other than her intercession. Miss Courtney is up there calling for miracles and how happy I am that we have been on the receiving end of her powerful intercession. Thank you, Mary and Jerry, for raising and caring for such an extraordinary young lady! I've been recommending her to others in need, so I think she'll be pretty busy up in heaven for quite some time.
St. Courtney, pray for us.
God Bless!
