Our story so far: We moved into a rental house two blocks from the church, ready to get to work renovating it into our dream home.

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It was two weeks after we originally planned to close on the church (two weeks!), and no closing had been scheduled. The church still didn’t have the paperwork it required to designate authorized signatures.

Tyler had had it. He was anything but understanding at this point.

Sure, we were protected from the elements now, but really! We wanted to close on the church two months ago! Should we walk away from the deal?

Though we entertained a few conspiracy theories that the congregation really didn’t want to sell the church, we knew in our hearts they just weren’t as motivated to wrap things up as we were. So we decided to give them some incentive. We offered to extend our offer for two more weeks (admitting to ourselves it would be a regular miracle if we closed in two weeks), but we also lowered our offering price. Now our good deal was even better!

We sweated it out for twenty-four hours while we awaited a response, but the church accepted. So now we had a few thousand more in our budget and two more weeks to plan how to use it.

As we relaxed in front of the TV one evening in our little rental house, I asked Tyler how he was feeling about things.

“Excited,” he said right away. “And scared.”

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Tomorrow: Tyler is knows very well what he’s in for. Read it here.