the sofa that God gave me.

so i have told this story before, but i believe it needs re-telling. God gave me the most beautiful and best sofa for my little family (which consists of me, my husband and two cats... mischevious ones). it all started in st. louis, missouri. phil and i moved there right after we were married. well, he had already been living there for a year but he had lived with other people who brought furniture, so he didn't really have to buy any at all. good for him, bad for us. we lived for about a month with hardly any furniture at all except our really awesome new bed i made him buy. (everyone says if you splurge on one new thing in newlywed life, it should be a good bed. i agreed.) so we found an entire set of furniture on craigslist for $300. we got a coffee table, sofa table, a stand, an end table, a sofa and a love seat. a whole room! for $300! it was great. however, the sofa and love seat were not of the best quality, but i was a newlywed so i didn't care and i lived with them. for 2 years. then we decided we were moving to georgia. i had come to despise our couches so i said, "phil, those ugly things are NOT coming with us. nooo sir." i didn't want to deal with bringing them all the way down here, storing them before we could move into our place, then trying to sell them anyway. we both had already agreed we would like a new sofa, and our apartment couldn't fit both pieces anyway. so we decided to just get rid of both and make life easier on us. the night before we moved, some sweet family with a girl about to move into a dorm in need of furniture bought both pieces for $80. i was so HAPPY!!! the ugly pieces were gone and we even made a little money off of them! yesssss.
this is the part where we moved into a new apartment and lived without a sofa for 2 months. so basically we sat on the floor for 8 weeks. all this time i was wishing, hoping and praying for a new sofa. a good one. that i LOVED. well, i was searching high and low for a sofa i wanted. i didn't just want any old piece of furniture. i wanted it to stand out to me as something i really wanted. we didn't really know what we were looking for though, so we started researching. enter woodstock furniture outlet : ). we decided to just go look around this amazing warehouse just packed with beautiful (and some expensive) furniture. we had set our budget around $300, but as we searched we realized $500 might be a little more realistic for a good piece of furniture that we could love on for a long time. well. this is about the time we looked all over the warehouse's new clearance center and i wasn't very impressed with anything. so, knowing we couldn't afford it, i just wanted to browse the rest of the 'normal' priced furniture. mis.take. that is when the light came shining through the front windows on the sofa of my dreams. heaven was shining down on it, and i answered the call, let me tell you. i was in awe. the sofa was giant. it was deep enough (which we both wanted), it had big bun feet (which i wanted), and big giant studs around the whole thing (which i mean, who doesn't want that?) it was soft, but not too soft. you sink in, but not too much. oh, it was just glorious. and i almost cried. it was about $1000... double our budget. : ( well, that was now my dream sofa and no other one would ever be quite as good and i knew it. and phil knew it. so i tried to figure out in my head how it could work. i couldn't. so i relunctantly started looking around for one in our price range.
this was all right about the time we moved. well, 2 months later i was driving around with my sister and matt. amazingly nice, patient people because when we drove past the outlet and i said, "hey! let's go in and visit my sofa!" they agreed. : ) so we made a random stop just to dream about it and maybe cry a little at my loss. when i saw it again it was in the color i would buy. the first time i saw it, it was in this really pretty light green color. now it was in a beige with blue and red threads going through it. shut. up. that's exactly what i needed. so this amazingly awesome salesman came over to ask me if i needed anything. i said i needed this sofa to be on sale. he said it was 20% off... yah... not enough. i said, well i am looking for something more around $500 soooo.... then he got this serious look and said the best words i have heard since maybe my wedding day:
"i think that exact sofa in that exact color is in my clearance center for $499."
"SHUT. UP. no it's not! are you lying?" (or something like that.)
"let's see..."
*us run-walking through the warehouse to the clearance center*
and there it was. my wonderful, beautiful, amazing perfect sofa in the perfect color. waiting for me. with a $599 price tag, which my salesman-of-the-year said he would change to $499. the tag claimed the sofa had a warped frame. we searched all over this thing. me and my salesman, and we didn't find one thing wrong with it. then, you know what he said? he said, "i don't see anything wrong here.. i think God just wants you to have this sofa." why yes, i believe you are correct. then wouldn't you know it, phil was at work but his students had a half day. so i called him to ask him what to do, and he answered right away. which never would have happened under normal circumstances. so i put my name on and reserved this sofa for phil to come back and purchase later. then i got an amazing deal on delivery. THEN when phil came to buy the couch (on credit.. which i wouldn't do under normal circumstances. i know what dave ramsey says.. but even HE would understand this!) they accidentally gave him 12 months no interest instead of 6, then said, oh well! just take the 12!.. and that is how i now have my incredible sofa of my dreams sitting in my living room. because God knew i loved it and wanted it so much. so He showed me that He doesn't just care about my needs, but also the things i want. He's so good, He doesn't JUST give us what we need but also some things we desire to have. what a good God. thank you Lord for my beautiful, perfect-for-us sofa. : )