WHEN A PLAN FALLS APART
"I love it when a plan comes together" John "Hannibal" Smith, The A-Team
I have to be honest with you, I was completely prepared to gloat and post this meme on Facebook when the plan we had in place to sell our houseboat came together. I knew that God had his hand on the deal that was working itself out, and how it was eerily similar to how we sold our first house. But nay. This plan did not come together. Let me tell you what it would have looked like.
Lets go back in time about 11 1/2 years. Lisa and I were still living in our first house in Peoria. It was awesome. We had just finished customizing it to our liking. It had a nice pool, a hot tub, decent sized yard, and great features inside. But, we were getting the itch to find a house on the lake.
We decided to list the house, found a realtor, and scheduled a date for the MLS listing. A couple of days before the listing was to go live, Lisa was walking back from the park with Lauren, who was just a toddler. A car pulled over to the curb, and a friendly couple with their realtor waved a flyer of a house for sale, and asked if she new where that address was. Lisa told them that it was in the neighborhood to the east of us, but that our home was going to be listed soon if they wanted to look at it. They loved the house, and made an offer on it a couple days later. God obviously had his hand on that.
So fast forward to June 2016. My buddy Steve, who had just retired, was passing by on his cabin cruiser, and dropped in the slip in front of us to chat. Lisa was on her way down the dock on a shuttle with a massive load of groceries. As Lisa was unloading off the shuttle, we were hailed by a family who was looking at a smaller houseboat a few slips from us. They said Mike Johnston, the broker at Pleasant Harbor Marina, mentioned to them that we were planning on listing our boat soon, and asked if they could take a quick look. (On a side note, Mike is a great guy, and has become a friend of ours since we bought our boat.)
They were a very nice family, with a son and daughter near in age to our girls, and an older daughter in high school. They are both pastors at a nearby church, and are considering moving aboard a boat full time, and possibly homeschooling their kids. As they were telling us their situation, I couldn't help but think back 11 years to the sale of our house. Could God really by doing this for us again? Of course he could, but was He?
The boat was not at all clean, as we weren't expecting to show it. We took them through, and explained all the work we had done, the changes we had made, and possibilities to make it work for a family of five. They seemed very interested, and we immediately hit it off. They came back out the next day with some additional family, and the kids were able to take advantage of the water slide. Needless to say the kids were sold on it!
We continued communications, and offered to have them stay over for a night to get a better feel of how life out here may be. We were afforded the same opportunity by the previous owners, so it seemed only fair to extend the same offer. They were excited at the offer, and we had them stay on a Thursday night, while we stayed at a friends house who was out of town.
The next day, we met them back at the marina, grilled some delicious grub on the boat, and spent a few hours talking about life, the future, and the possible sale of the boat. We were ecstatic when they communicated that they were ready to make an offer after a survey (boat appraisal) was completed. The boat was to be hauled out of the water to re-skin a small portion of the port side pontoon in a few weeks, and the survey could be completed then.
The plan looked like this: They would put their house up for sale, which their realtor said should sell in a couple weeks due to location and value, find partial financing, and pay us cash for the boat. The timing looked like it would coincide nicely with my retirement eligibility date of July 22nd. We'd collect the funds, sign the boat over, and start heading east to begin our grand adventure.
Lisa and I laid in bed that night, marveling at the possibility of God making another small miracle in our lives. We woke up that next Saturday morning, eager to work on the list of things we wanted to complete on the boat before we sold it. I went to work Monday, and filled in my squad-mates on the possible sale to this awesome family. I forwarded the the family our pre-renovation survey from 2013 so they could start to valuate the boat themselves in it's current condition.
Then, the email came:
Hey Mike,
I had a conversation with 4 different lenders today... Got some not so great news... [We] are pretty discouraged... none of them will even consider the financing because of either the age of the boat, the lack of comps or ability to book a boatel penthouse or even because its a steel hull pontoon structure instead of a monohull aluminum. Lenders don't like steel... it floors me...
My heart sank. The email also detailed what funds they could come up with, and that they were not giving up on trying to buy the boat. I immediately forwarded it to Lisa. A minute later my phone rang. Lisa and I talked about some possibilities to make it work for this family, but every scenario we came up with left us short on the funding we'll need to purchase a catamaran outright. A few follow-up emails solidified that they were not giving up on trying to purchase our boat, and would continue to seek out options.
So, here we are, with a plan that has fallen apart. Or has it?
Lisa and I (and the other family) are wise enough to know that God's plan is always better than any plan we could come up with on our own. So, we wait, patiently, for the plan to reveal itself. Things may still work out for our new friends, or they may go another direction. Either way, we know God has it, and it's easier to let go of the outcome and let Him handle the details.
We will list the boat for sale after the 4th of July craziness out here subsides, and see what happens. We will also continue to try to make things work out with our new friends. If nothing else, we have made friends with a great family, and there's not a price you can put on that.
The morning after I penned this draft, Lisa was reading her morning devotion based in Proverbs. "Dreams Fulfilled" was the title with the scripture of "When hope's dream seems to drag on and on, the delay can be depressing." -Proverbs 13:12
Stay tuned for the post titled "I Love It When A Plan Comes Together!"
