O.K., I only have a few minutes but I got to share this with everybody. By the way, I'm still working on making the rounds to say hi to everybody, so if I haven't been by yet, I'll be by soon...
Thursday, Friday, and Saturday we were working at the Equine Affaire. Thurs we worked 4 hours (1:00 to 5:00) selling programs at the gate to the people coming inside the Fairplex; Friday we worked 6 hours (10 - 4) helping kids make stick horses in the Youth Pavilion; Saturday we worked 2 1/2 hours (10-12) in the Youth Pavilion...sounds like a math problem, doesn't it? :-) Thursday we did the hour's drive to the Fairplex, did our 4 hours, and looked around and stuff (and watched cowboy mounted shooting -- fun!), did the hour's drive back, and got to bed maybe 11:00 or so.
Friday morning we were up at 7:00. We did our hour's drive, did our 6 hours, met up with some very *very* dear friends who were also attending (the horse they trained in the Mustang Makeover was in the Race, but that's a whole 'nother post), hung out with them for awhile, then went together to the Craig Cameron's Extreme Cowboy Race that evening. It was a lot of fun hanging out with them... The Race was almost over, and Mom was sort of preparing to go, and all of a sudden she couldn't remember where she'd put her keys. She looked through the bag that we were carrying -- not there. She felt through all her pockets -- not there. I patted down all my pockets -- not there. We started getting worried. We looked under the bleachers we were sitting on; we looked in the pockets of the extra coat I'd brought...we couldn't find them anywhere.
Mom came to the conclusion that she'd left them in the volunteer office. By this time it's maybe 10:00 at night, and the volunteer office closed at 7:00. We managed, by the help of some security guards, to get in contact with the coordinator of the event, and she, bless her heart, sent one of the other coordinators to unlock the door for us and help us look. We searched the volunteer office, the bathrooms downstairs, everywhere...nothing. We got together with our friends again, and discussed what to do next. We looked all around the stables where we had hung out together before the Race, and then we decided to get back in touch with the coordinators and security guards and see if we could look in the Information booth where the keys would have been turned in had they been found by anybody. Still nothing. Our dear friends, bless them, drove us the hour's drive back to our house so we could pick up our spare key, then they would drive us back to our car, which was still in the parking lot. We were tired, Mom and I both felt kind of sick, we just both felt like 'this was so not in our plans...' We did a lot of praying, and a lot of talking with our friends, and the drive went pretty well.
We got home, picked up the spare key, everybody did a bathroom stop, and we all piled back in the Jeep. As I got in, I noticed that one of the cargo pockets of my pants was bulkier than I had remembered it being. I couldn't remember putting anything that bulky into my pocket, so I patted it down again...my heart almost stopped. I pulled the keys out of my pocket. I couldn't believe I was actually holding them. My voice was almost shaky as I said, "Mom, hold out your hand." I thought I was dreaming or something.
Mom held out her hand, and the instant the keys touched her hand, she knew what they were. We praised God. Our friends, who could easily have started grousing about how they had driven us the hour home, would drive us the hour back, and still had a two hour drive to get back to their own home, praised the Lord with us -- Uncle Joe's first comment was "Hallelujah! Now you don't have to get all those keys copied!"
This was such a God-thing, such a miracle, because the keys were not in my pocket earlier! They just weren't there -- and then they were! There is no way to explain that but the hand of God. We praised Him with our friends, then the next day we praised Him before the coordinators and other volunteers, and also to some of the people that were attending the Equine Affaire.
As our friends said, maybe this was God's way of protecting us from something on the ride home...or protecting them from something on their ride home...or maybe the Lord just knew that we needed a little more time with our dear friends... Whatever His reason was, I know He had a sovereign plan, and knew about this before the world even began -- isn't that such a comfort to know, to realize that He has everything under control, nothing surprises Him or takes Him unexpected?
I don't know if I'll ever come up with more of it, but the chorus of a song started going through my head the next morning, and I know it was from Him. I can tell the difference between when I'm making up a poem or song, and when He gives me one -- because the words are not mine, they are just there. Here's the chorus:
Won't you join me in praising His goodness right now?
7 comments:
That is great!!! What a blessing!!
Something like that happened to us one time.We were going to visit family and we had car trouble and was late leaving. We had a four hour drive and my husband was upset that we left so late.
As we drove, we past a car accident, That, if we would had been 5 minutes earlier, it would have been us.
God does protect His children in ways we don't see at first. but we alway know that God's hand was in it after all is said and done.
Wow that's strange to think that it was in your packet the whole time.
Form Daughter.
Wow! What a day you had! I got goosebumps reading it halfway through! God is so good!
You just had a minute? Then again most of your posts are quite long.
That is such an amazing story! We had a similar problem a few weeks back but in this case we locked our keys in the car! We tried unsucessfully to open a door via a window, we finally called the police and a friendly officer came and quickly opened the door. :)
Praise the LORD...wow, isn't it amazing the lengths that God goes to? He is so good! Thank yo so much for sharing this!!
Well, this one thing I am sure of it happened so God could get the glory from it, and He did!!! I am so thankful that they keys turned up, that you got to spend extra time with your friends and that God used this one more time to increase your faith in Him. God bless you. connie from Texas
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