Honest Prayer of a Nervous Home Seller

Dear Lord, help me sell this house before the snow melts, because a peaceful blanket of your winter moisture over my backyard will be the only acceptable camouflage for that neglected jungle.

Bless my eyes to open to new visions, and see the scuff marks upon the walls that have hidden in plain sight lo these many years.

Please send slightly unimaginative buyers to my door, that they may see the beautiful golf course next door, but not comprehend the possibility of a plague of mulligans that shatter the glass of house and auto and cause the sin of profanity.  And while you’re at it Lord, bless the untalented golfers to send their mulligans to the right—not to the direction of my vulnerable abode.  Send the balls to the right and the cash-buyers to the left.

Bless the twenty-first century cleaning chemicals Lord—that they may substitute for the strong arms of my pioneer foremothers.  For I am a desk-dweller, and my arms are weak and sore.

Until I sell this house, Lord, send only the charming and playful squirrels that dance in the trees and gladden the heart.  Keep the sadistic roof-gnawers far from me!  Send those to the next street over. 

Lord, bless the stack of boxes in my storage room that it may defy gravity—and that the homeowners will magically think that all their stuff will fit in this house, even though mine didn’t.

Bless my friends to still like me after this house is sold.  For I have manipulated and cajoled them into packing boxes and hanging pictures.  And I have guilted their husbands and teenage sons into moving heavy boxes for me.  Strengthen their backs and their patience, for I need them Lord.  They care for me even though I’m a hot mess. 

Give me the color-blind buyer Lord, who may mistake the brown stain upon the gray carpet as mere shadow.  I’m not asking you to strike someone color blind….but I’m not ruling it out either.

Merciful Lord, send to me people who do not watch HGTV, and do not expect hardwood floors and granite counter tops.  For I cannot afford them.  Send to me those people for whom the Property Brothers hold no allure. 

Lord, protect my house from creepy people, for I will be gone while the house shows.  Send to my home only licensed agents with pre-qualified buyers who are neither vandals nor underpants stealers. 

Amen.