My husband Ray and I planned to simplify our lives by moving to a condo in a 55+ community—just a one-bedroom unit. No more exhaustive house cleaning and yard work. We needed to sell our beloved home, which I felt was blessed from the first moment we looked at it, twenty-five years ago.

We put our home on the market and had many moments of uneasiness as the weeks passed. Ray would write up different scenarios of possible offers on the house and how we would respond. But we would always come back to the Word of Life:

“Live by the Spirit… if you are guided by the Spirit, you are not under the law” (Gal 5:16,18).

For us it meant to love each other and everyone who came by us, without getting caught up in the law of how we could make it happen by human ways. We often had to renew our mutual love as we felt the tension of selling our home in a slow housing market. We decided to trust God to find the “special” family for our home.

As the fifth week passed, we had had three open houses and many calls to see the house, yet we still had not received one offer. Then one evening there was a message from our realtor. A family who had seen the home that day loved it. For over two years they had been looking in the area for a house like ours because they have a child with “special needs” and our home met their requirements. Now our house is sold to that very special family God had found for us.

J. R., Boston

Published with permission from Living City February 2007, the Focolare Movement's monthly magazine of religion, dialogue and culture | www.livingcitymagazine.com