Two years later in the fall of 2004, Tom Kirkpatrick called about an opportunity at the home office. I remember being thrilled about the opportunity, and yet at the same time I kept asking myself, why now? I had prayed for such an opportunity for years, but why now? We had just built a beautiful house. Wendy and I both had great jobs. Two years ago would have been perfect. But now—could it be God's will for us now? What we wanted was a sign. Is this answered prayer or not? We decided that we would put our house up for sale, and if this was God's will, our house would sell quickly. In fact, we said we would give an answer in two weeks. We proceeded forward with the plan, and we were ready for our first open house that next Sunday. The morning before, I got up early while it was still dark outside, and I opened the door to let Prissy, our dog, out. Prissy was out like a flash. I knew she must have seen something, so I yelled to call her back. In seconds I heard a yelp. She rushed back into sight in a mad dash toward the house with her ears back and her tail between her legs. There I stood with the door wide open, and as she rushed by, an awful stench billowed up around me. She had been sprayed by a skunk! In shock, I watched Prissy run through the house, rubbing against anything she could touch to try to rid herself of the smell. By the time I caught up with her, she had spread the skunk smell from one end of the house to the other. The whole house reeked. This was not the sign I was looking for! Needless to say, we had to cancel the open house. In fact it was over two weeks before the skunk smell no longer permeated the house. My two weeks was up, and we hadn't shown the house to a single person. I was discouraged and I remembered thinking that perhaps this was not an answer to our prayers after all. Eventually, everything did work out. We were able to sell our house and move to Cincinnati . Looking back on those events, I'm reminded of an important principle. God answers our prayers according to His perfect timing, not our own imperfect timing. God answered my prayer, but it was according to His timeframe, not my own. I thought two years earlier would have been perfect, but God said no. It turned out God's timing was so much better than mine. We need to learn to trust God's timing in our life and be patient and not try to force things to happen according to our own imperfect timing. David writes in Psalm 31:14-15, "But as for me, I trust in You, O LORD; I say ‘You are my God.' My times are in Your hand." My times—the good times, the bad times, the joyous times and the troublesome times—my life, in other words, is in God's hands. We develop trust in God by putting "our times" in God's hands. Trusting God often requires not knowing when God will answer, but knowing with certainty that God will answer our prayers. The Bible is full of promises for us, and we must trust God to fulfill those promises when the timing is right and best for us. God knows when that is; we often do not. God is never late in fulfilling His promises to us. They will not be overdue a single day! UN