Surprises on the Other Side of a Prayer Request

We’ve all made these types of prayer requests. And that’s the way it’s meant to be. God, Mary, the angels and the saints are there for us in our times of need.

But have you ever considered this aspect of prayer?

When you pray to find a parking spot, someone else has to not find that same parking spot. You pray to find a spouse, someone else is being denied marrying that same person. When you get this particular job, another person who wanted the job does not get it. And when you pray to find the right house, not only does some other person not get the house, but some family that currently lives in that house has to move out so that you can move into it.

There’s always someone or something that is inconvenienced, if that’s the right word, if our prayers are answered the way we want them. There are two sides to every story, and there are two sides to every prayer, as well. Personally, I never thought about this aspect of prayer until I became the one who was inconvenienced so that God could answer another family’s prayer request.

Here’s what happened.

My family and I lived in a nice home in our town. We had spent a lot of time fixing it up, finishing the basement, building in bookcases, painting every wall, planting trees in the yard, and building a beautiful stone patio in the backyard. We loved our home. We thought we’d stay for quite a while and even discussed adding on if our family size increased. There were no plans to move—not now, not in the future.

My wife’s parents were looking to move from Texas to our part of the world, so she was working with a realtor to help find them a suitable house. Through this process, she found a house that she thought might be a good one for us to look at—for us to possibly move to. I was perplexed because I thought we were very happy where we were living. But my wife suggested we go and take a look anyway. We went, the house was OK, but not for us. As we departed, the realtor gave us a print-out of some other houses she had found.

Later that day, I looked at the print-outs and noticed a house that looked very interesting—it was twice as big as our current house; it had a couple of acres, a pool, and beautiful views—but much more expensive than our current house. I drove by the house and immediately loved the size, location, amenities, and just about everything about it. I drove home and excitedly told my wife that we needed to buy this house.  

And that’s where the craziness started.

I wasn’t making very much money. I already had a decent sized mortgage on my current home. There was no way I was going to get approved to buy the other much more expensive house and hold another mortgage while I still held my current mortgage. But that’s what I needed to do since there were a couple of other people looking at the house, and I needed to put in an offer ASAP if I was going to get the house. The house I was interested in was around $90k more than the original price of the house I currently lived in, which made this idea even more outlandish.

But for some reason, we decided to move forward. 

I contacted a guy I know who was in the mortgage business. I told him my situation, and he replied that he was too new at his job to be able to help me out. He suggested I talk to his boss, who was much more seasoned in these matters. “Who’s your boss?” I asked. “Don Shomette,” he said. “Don Shomette? Really? I was his RCIA instructor when he was converting to the faith. Amazing,” I said. I called Don—whom I had not talked to, nor kept track of, for 7 or 8 years—and Don tells me he thinks he can make it happen and get me a mortgage on this new house, without selling my current house! 

So, I make an offer on the house; it gets accepted, and now I need to sell my current house. Things are moving along very quickly!

I talked to a real estate agent I knew who informed me that, to my great delight and surprise, my house was worth about $80k more than I bought it for. He also told me that if I found my own buyer, he’d work up all the paperwork for me and take a smaller commission. So, now with the increase in our current house value, the difference in buying the new house was going to be just $10-$15k—much more doable—and coincidentally, right around this same time, I was offered a promotion at Christendom College, which conveniently came with a large salary increase!

I immediately sent an email to Christendom College’s alumni email group, announcing my house for sale, and within a week, I had a number of interested people contact me. A couple of them came to see the house, but they were either not very interested or the price was out of their range.

Then, on the following Sunday, an alumni couple asked if they could come by and see the house. We agreed, they arrived, and we showed them the house. After talking to them about the house and everything else under the sun for about three hours, they were very excited to buy the house, but they just needed some things to fall into place on their end. They told us that they were praying a novena to St. Joseph to find the right house and that they believed that our house was the answer to their prayers. As with many things that are put into the hands of St. Joseph, things did fall into place and they ended up buying our house.

So, what is so great, amazing, or supernatural about this particular story? Many things!

We were happily living where we were living. We did not want to move. All of a sudden, we are looking for houses for my in-laws, which leads to us looking at a house for ourselves. I should not have been able to afford two mortgages, but the mortgage guy happens to be one of those I helped convert to the Faith many years prior? And then my house value goes up by 70%? And then I get a promotion and a large raise?

And then there are two other aspects which solidify the Divine nature of this story: the date chosen for our closing and the name of the family who bought our house.

As you may be aware, when people buy houses, a closing date is normally suggested by the realtor, although the buyers and sellers can come up with their own date if it works out more conveniently.  The realtor I was working with to buy the new house randomly inserted the date March 19 into the contract I had submitted when making the offer on the house. For those playing along at home, March 19 is the Solemnity of St. Joseph, the same St. Joseph to whom the family had been praying a novena, and, also the same St. Joseph who was the patron of Guardian Real Estate—the name of the real estate agency helping us sell our house.

And finally, if things could not get even “weirder,” the name of the road on which our house was located was Adams Avenue and the people who bought our house—yep, you guessed it—they were the Adams family! As the kids say today, that’s a St. Joseph “mic drop.”

And as we went to closing at the title company, after signing all of our documents and handing over the keys, Mr. Adams presented a very large statue of St. Joseph to my family, in thanksgiving to the role that we played in his family’s St. Joseph novena, and in thanksgiving to St. Joseph, for helping them find a house, and a family that was willing to move out of it.

Remember, next time you make a prayer request, there is another side to your request, and it’s possibly going to affect someone else, too. So, be careful what you pray for!

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Photo by Nick Castelli on Unsplash