God’s Timing — Not Mine!

I am sitting in a travel trailer in St. Peters, Missouri.  It was 16 degrees  last night.  The trailer was warm enough, but this morning we found our water lines frozen.  We never planned on winter camping anyway, but God’s timing is not our timing, and is always the best.

We sold our home in Fulton, Missouri to a lovely couple.  Our original closing date was to be February 18.  That sounded good.  We decided we would bring our travel trailer to Missouri, so that we could have limited contact throughout the country with restaurants and other facilities we might need as traveling.

Then on January 8, our agent called and said that the buyers requested an earlier closing date of January 29.  Of course, we were happy to accommodate such a change, but that also meant we had a lot of things to get ready at the last minute.

Our home in Missouri was still completely furnished.  I learned a hard lesson about vacating a home when I married Dennis.  My house was on the market, and I moved my furniture from St. Charles, MO to his home in Fulton, MO, and the next thing I knew, I got a letter from my homeowner’s insurance company saying they canceled my insurance because I abandoned the home!  Whoa!  Really?  We called another insurance company and asked if they would insure the house, and they said they would as long as we stayed there sometime every 60 days.  We took a blow up bed and put it in the master bedroom, and came in town and slept on it so we could keep the home insured.

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Missouri is our permanent home until the Fulton house is sold, so we kept all the furniture there.  The closets were emptied, but there were a few kitchen items left so I could cook when there.  

We contemplated buying airline tickets to come back, but last minute flights are always super pricey along with having to rent a car for the time we were there.  Instead, we decided to take the travel trailer with us.  We could come to Fulton, donate the furniture that the buyer did not want to purchase.  We could always live in the travel trailer in front of the house.  After the closing on January 29, we planned to drive to St. Louis, visit with our kids, and then head home to our new permanent address in Arizona.

Last year we were very disappointed that our contingent buyers had not completed what they needed to do to remove the contingency from their contract.  Then Covid-19 had hit the country.  It was summer, and we had always planned to go back to Missouri in the summer to see family and friends.  Our home had not sold.  That was when Dennis bought the travel trailer so we could safely travel back.  The blessing was that we actually could stay in our Fulton home for the summer.  We didn’t entertain like we had in the past due to the pandemic, but we did have a couple grandkids who wanted to get away from St. Louis and spent a few weeks in the country with us.  We used the pool every day, played games in the evenings, and had a wonderful summer.  We also opened our home for a weekend to a family to spend a quiet vacation before the mom had major surgery. I told told Dennis   that God knew we needed a safe place to land for the summer.  As disappointed as we were, that the sale did not go through, we had safety at our beautiful country home.

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So here we are getting a new buyer, and a request for an earlier date to close.  I was helping my cousin make a tee shirt quilt for a gift when I realized I needed to speed the up the process to complete it in the three days before we left Arizona.  Job accomplished.  She and I got it to the long arm quilter the evening before we left. 

We arrived at our home, and I called the charity, Love Columbia, where I wanted to donate the furniture.  I asked for a date as close to the closing date as possible so we could be in our house until the last minute.  Unfortunately, the charity had all those dates filled up, but they could do a pick up the next morning.  In ways that we never realized, good things happen.  Our buyers wanted to purchase our bedroom set, the bar stools, some living room tables, and a couple chairs.  We were able to let the charity pick up our furniture, and we will still had a place to sleep, a place to sit to eat meals, and a place to sit and relax!  God is good!  While in Fulton we drove to Columbia and Chillicothe to visit Dennis’ brothers and wives.  We were able to spend time with my grandson who is at the University of Missouri in Columbia.  

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Then the title company called us and said we didn’t have to wait until the 29th to sign papers.  We could come in early and get all our paperwork signed.  They will wire the proceeds to us.  The timing couldn’t be more perfect, because we got an unexpected phone call three days earlier telling us that my brother-in-law had passed away.  His funeral was set in St. Louis on our closing date.  We signed our papers, came back to our home in Fulton, hooked up our travel trailer, and bid the home goodbye for good.  It was a bittersweet moment.

We are at an RV park outside of the St. Louis area.  We have been able to a few family members, and we are staying until after the funeral.  When I spoke with my nephew, I told him we were traveling through, but we only have blue jeans and sweaters and casual shoes.  Bless his heart, he said he would be glad to see us in our casual attire.  I think he was just glad we were in Missouri and could easily attend the funeral. 

After arriving in the St. Louis area, the temperature dropped and the snow fell.  We thought we had our trailer ready for winter camping, but our water line froze.  We are still newbies to the RV camping, and really newbies to winter camping.  Not good, but for me another blessing—we are going to stay in a hotel tonight that is near the church.  It is the same hotel I stayed in when my sister (wife of this brother-in-law) had her funeral.  I will have a full shower, and be able to do hair and makeup easily, and not have to wake up at the crack of dawn to get done to drive the distance from this RV park to the church.

We will leave the for Arizona this Saturday (the day after the funeral).  We have been watching the weather all week to plan our trip back to Arizona.  If the weather forecast is bad for New Mexico and Northern Arizona, we would have to adjust our driving route.  Instead, Saturday the temperature in Oklahoma City (our first night’s stop) will be above freezing from a high expected during the day of 66 degrees.  Surprisingly, Albuquerque, New Mexico (our stop Sunday night) will be below freezing at night, but will have a high in the 50’s both Sunday and Monday as we drive in and out.  Northern Arizona will be predicting warm temperatures Monday as we drive to our home that will be greeting us with temperatures in the 70’s!

The timing has been perfect for everything.  As anxious as we were for the sale of our home, I always said that everything would work out much better than we would have planned, because God’s timing is always the best!