A faithful memory

One of the blogs I follow, A Place Called Simplicity, posts special stories about God's faithfulness called Memorial Box Monday.  Today I wanted to join in because I want to never forget God's faithfulness in meeting our needs.

This story happened about 27 years ago. John and I had only been married a little over a year. Beth had been born and gotten out of the hospital, when a job opportunity within his company opened up for John that could eventually lead to more money. The job was in Raleigh and we were living in Charlotte. (That in itself shows God's love for me. I'd always said one of the two places I really want to live is Raleigh. Here, God was giving me my heart's desire!)

His company gave him a Friday and weekend to find a place to live. We packed Baby Beth up and went to drop her off  to stay with Mom and Dad while we went looking for a place to live. We were quite shocked to find that that wasn't going to be an easy task. Everywhere we looked the apartment rents were way too high. We spent both Friday and Saturday looking to no avail. At the end of the day on Saturday, we decided that we would go back to this one place we had seen that was more than likely out of our price range and was only an one bedroom apartment, on the third floor. This definitely was not our choice, but we didn't think we had any choice. We had to have a place and this was the only one we could remotely afford. We prayed for God's guidance while we were on our way there.

We pulled into the office parking lot, and were distraught to find that they had already closed and would not be back until Monday. We really didn't know what to do, so we started back to Mom and Dad's with no place to live. John was dreading telling his company that we couldn't find a place. I was wondering how long I'd have to live in Charlotte while John worked in Raleigh? We were tired, distraught and afraid!

I began reading the newspaper, which is really weird, since I get carsick at the thought of reading in the car. I had been reading that same paper all day, and hadn't seen anything. I happened to look in the classifieds one more time, just for kicks and giggles!  Just as we were approaching Zebulon, I read about a two bedroom apartment that was comfortably in our price range. We quickly took the exit and stopped at the first payphone we could find. (Neither of us had a cell phone). We were well aware that the office could be closed, and it was. The message gave another number to call, so John tried that one. A lady answered the phone and explained about the apartment. She was on her way to the beach for the weekend, but had stopped at the gas station right across the street from where we were. She offered to show us the apartment right then before she left town.

It ended up becoming our home for a year. While we didn't like being in a small town, the Lord knew what we needed. That first year was very hard financially. We needed the lower rent and lower cost of living that a small town offered. We never would have picked that place to live, unless we had experienced the searching of the previous days. It was amazing that I just happened to read about the apartment as we were coming to the town, and we just happened to pull into a place that the realtor just happened to be momentarily stopped across the street from. Just happened???? Certainly not! God was completely directing our paths to the place he knew we needed to be!