In his Time: A Testimony of God’s Faithfulness

July 19, 2021
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Seven years ago, my husband, David, died from cancer at the age of 44. At the time, we were living in the first home we bought together, which we had also built. By God’s grace, the kids and I were able to continue living in that home for years after David’s death. Not every widow can say the same. I am thankful for the time God gave us there.

However, God brought me to a new place through the process of writing and performing The Tapestry, a play I had written about my argument and eventual peace with God about becoming a widow. That whole process is a blog post of its own, but long story short: a couple of weeks before Tapestry’s first performance, I began to think that it might be time for our family to move. 

The first performance of The Tapestry was in June of 2019. Two days after its second performance in February 2020, I started looking at properties in the area “just to see” what was out there. I also started working on the typical fix-it jobs for our house “just in case” I decided to put it up for sale in the summer. Nothing was set in stone. I was just sticking my toe in the water because I had a sense God had told me back in June of 2019 that summer 2020 was going to be our time to jump.

Have you ever stuck your toe in the water only to discover that you get sucked under by some inescapable force right as all the world around you starts to blow up? Well, welcome to the Sacks family move of 2020 during the COVID pandemic. Some of my friends thought I was crazy for planning this move during a pandemic; I thought I was crazy for the amount of work my friends and I were doing to fix up my house for what might only be a potential sale, and let’s be honest, everyone thought it was crazy that buyers were suddenly forced to make back-alley deals with sellers to look at houses without their realtors (who had been legally banned from doing business). It was all nuts, but onward I trudged because…God told me to.

The end of the story is that my house sold without even going on the market to the second private buyer who walked in the door (within hours of the first private buyer). It was the highest selling home in the history of my neighborhood, which is one of the oldest neighborhoods in the area, and we found another home in a historic artists’ community in the woods. I bought our new house for $90K under the sellers’ asking price (even after someone outbid me by $30K) because the house is in our current school district and the sellers know me. And that big, beautiful home David and I built together? Yeah, it was so so hard to leave, but our new property is better for us financially, and we have almost an acre with a tire swing, hammock, koi pond, sunroom, space for hosting, and enough wildlife and glowing autumn trees to make the romantic poets cry.

All this to say: God did it, God did it, God did it. And He did it with such flair! Selling a high-end home during a pandemic, carefully removing us from the only home we’d known with David, and settling us into a unique and beautiful new home that is within walking distance of all three of our schools. I mean REALLY. Can you believe that!

When He speaks, He is faithful to act. God once said to Jeremiah “You have seen well, for I am watching over my word to perform it” (Jer 1:12). I believe that God caused me to “see well” and that He watched over His word until He performed it. It’s a good thing I know how to hold my breath though because that whole toe-dip thing really turned into a full-body experience! Glory be to God.

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