I have been a follower of The Secret for many years. I imagine what I want, believe, and receive. For example, when I met my husband, I told him, “I always get the front parking spot.” He started to believe me when I, of course, pulled right up to any place we went and parked directly in front. On many occasions, I’ve reminded him it’s the Universe and my positive thinking!

For two years, my husband and I have spent Sundays looking at open houses. We always told the agent, “We are waiting for the right one,” which would be our very first house after renting all our lives. Sometimes, we’d see features we loved, but something else was not what we desired in our “perfect” house. Once, we saw a house with a unique atrium but it was not in the best neighborhood. Another time we saw the coolest fireplace made with large rocks but the house was too small. Once we saw a great yard where my husband wanted to build a stacked stone wall, we loved the quiet streets on which we found some houses, and we were always looking for a walk-in closet and a place we could build a dog run.

We never found “the one” and decided to wait instead of settling. Further, my husband had just started his own business in August and we were told we could not get a home loan until he had been successful for a minimum of two years.

Well, on my birthday at the end of March, my husband called me at work and said, “You have to come see this house.” He’d met the owner, whose father had passed away, and she was going to put the house on the market that week, but for much more than we could afford.

It was ‘the one’! We could not stop talking about this house; it was at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac, had an atrium in the middle of the house, a large yard with a stacked stone wall, a dog run already built, a cedar-lined walk-in closet, and not one rock fireplace but two! It was everything we wanted in all of the houses we had seen, all in one house.

For my birthday wish that night, I wished for this house when I blew out my candle. Before I went to bed that night, I took a dry-erase marker and wrote “Our new house: the address” on our bathroom mirror. Then, I started believing this was going to be our forever home. I went to sleep pretending I was in our new bedroom.

We called a friend who was a lender just to see if there was any way we could buy the house, especially since my husband’s income would not be considered for the loan. We kept repeating, “This is our dream home” and envisioning our lives there. The next day, we were approved for the total purchase price and that night we made an offer on the house before it hit the market. I knew it was in the hands of the Universe.

The very next morning, I randomly found the seller’s profile on social media and we had two mutual friends: my mom and my mom’s best friend! I called my mom who told me they’d been friends for years and upon realizing that was the house my husband and I couldn’t stop talking about, she called her friend.

Later that day, the seller accepted our offer, even though she would have sold the house for much more to someone else. Other small details fell into place through escrow and we got the keys to our dream home 28 days later.

Our story sounds incredible to others, but I know it was The Secret. I believed we wouldn’t have to settle and we’d find the house of our dreams and the Universe would make things happen for us to get it. And my husband is a believer now, too!