I should have known.

For those of you who are on the edge of your seats wondering whatever became of our "roof" situation, here is an update.

Just to get everyone up to speed, about three months ago we received a letter from our insurance company informing us they were going to have someone do an "outdoor visual inspection" to see if there were any issues with our house that would cause them to decide to discontinue our coverage. My heart immediately began racing because I knew they would say we needed a new roof. We had checked into a new roof, but came to find out it was going to cost $10,000+ to redo it because of the height and because we have asbestos shingles.

Needless to say, that project quickly went to the back of line. That is, until we received the letter.

I didn't know what we would do. We HAVE to have insurance, but we didn't have $10,000 to fix our roof. So, we did what we always do..... we prayed. Now, some people pray for God to work everything out just the way they want it to work out. But we learned a LONG time ago, that's not the wisest prayer. We learned that we are working with very limited information, while He is working with the COMPLETE picture. We prayed for everything to work out the way HE wanted it to work out, and determined in our hearts to trust Him in whatever He decided.

You see, we have found over the course of our lives that God really does take care of us. He always has. Our lives are not always easy. Everything isn't always smooth-sailing. But He is always with us. He always takes care of us. And when we have to face tough things, He always sees us through and teaches us valuable lessons along the way. So when we prayed for everything to work out the way He wanted it to work out, we prayed knowing we were in the best hands we could possibly be in.

Well, the insurance guy came and guess what? He said we needed a new roof, and we got a letter saying they were going to discontinue our insurance. Our insurance agent called us and said if we could get it fixed before October (when our insurance expires) they would continue coverage. We decided to file an insurance claim and see what happened. We can't really see that high, but we hoped maybe they would find some hail damage and cover at least a portion of the roof. At this point, anything would help.

Yesterday some guys came out to make the decision. I found my heart being anxious, so Leonard and I sat down to pray again. We told God it didn't matter to us what kind of numbers this guy came back to us with because our trust was in Him, not them. We have entrusted our lives to Him, not the insurance company. And we decided a long time ago that no matter what this world throws at us, we would live with grateful hearts because we serve a God who deeply loves us, and that's all that really matters. What we have or don't have in this world is not the most important thing.

The guy finally knocked on the door and came in to discuss his findings. There was a little bit of hail damage on our roof. But because they no longer make asbestos shingles, the insurance company is going to cover replacing the entire roof. They will be paying for ALMOST ALL OF IT! More than we ever dared hope for or dream of. My heart was flooded with gratitude.

About 3 months ago, we were informed the insurance company would be doing a visual inspection and I thought it was terrible, terrible news. But if they hadn't done that, we would have never discovered the insurance company would pay for replacing our roof. We wouldn't have known, we wouldn't have asked. We would have just struggled to try to find a way to pay for it ourselves.

Once again, God drove the point home. We are working with so little information. What seems like the worst possible situation can be the beginning of the best thing that could happen. Trust. Trust that He knows what He is doing. Trust that He loves you. Trust that He will see you through, whether it's easy or it's hard. Certainly we are grateful the insurance company is covering our roof. But we know in our hearts if it had gone the other way, He still would have made a way. We still would have trusted Him to see us through, because that's what He does. He is a kind and loving and merciful God.

And He makes it so easy to live with a grateful heart.