God Ordained Detours

I have blogged many times about detours but once again, I have a detour story. It happened several weeks ago. First of all, I will share what I had journaled in prayer...

"Trust Me and I will use your life as a living sacrifice. The experiences I allow in you will be the greatest teacher. Live out loud for Me, full of promise and purpose. Don't seek the blessing. That will come when your motive is for the good of My Kingdom."

I Samuel 2:7 "The Lord maketh poor and maketh rich: he bringeth low and lifteth up."

I'm not sure that every part of that entry fit into my circumstance that day but that is what I felt Him telling me. Cameron had been sick and was at work with me that day. At lunch I had a few errands to run for the church. We went to three stores. When I came out of the third store I realized I didn't have my iPhone. Now, I don't know how you are with your phone, but mine has everything on it... lot of personal information, emails, notes... it's pretty vital to my day. Needless to say, I was panicked and frustrated.

We ran back into the store we had just left and didn't find it. We decided to back track. I knew that it was most likely at the first store (Kroger). I also knew that it was a very busy place and where we had spent most of our time. The second store was Tuesday Morning, a much less busy store. We decided to try Kroger first. We went to the customer service desk, back to the cashier and then retraced our steps through the store. I gave them Bryan's number in case it turned up. From there we went to Tuesday Morning. When I asked the cashier about it, a lady in line insisted that I take her phone and use it to call my phone throughout the store. We thanked her and tried this with no luck. She then insisted that I take it out to my car and call, making sure it hadn't fallen down between the seats. She was so nice and trusting of us, complete strangers. We gave her back her phone and headed back to my office to try to cancel the phone and see what else I needed to do. On the way back I realized that I had given the cashier at Tuesday Morning my number instead of Bryan's but I didn't even worry about correcting it because I knew my phone wasn't there. I had only been on one aisle in that store.

Later that evening when we got home with a new SIM card to put in one of my old phones, I was able to get my line working again. I immediately had a voicemail from the lady who had been in line at Tuesday Morning. While listening to it, my phone started ringing. It was her again. She explained how she had been trying to call me all day long. She said that after I left she got a call from a lady shopping at Kroger who had found this phone in her buggy and decided to call the last number that had called the phone. She wasn't sure what to do with the phone, but my new found friend from TM told her to hang onto it and she would get in touch with me. Here's the neat part... neither lady should have been there that day. The lady at TM wasn't even from here. She was in town that one day and in the same store as me at the right time. The lady who found my phone had just had surgery but needed to get her hair cut that day and had stopped by Kroger for just a minute. God knew who to trust my phone with for sure.

To wind this story down... I made contact with the lady and drove to her house to get my phone. She was such a sweet lady and was obviously very weak from surgery. We talked for quite a while and then she asked that we keep her in our prayers. I told her that if she didn't mind, we would pray for her right then. She said, "you would do that?" I said, "Absolutely!" So, Cam & I joined hands with her and we had prayer. God's presence was there so rich and full. She just hugged me so tightly and thanked me. She said she felt like this was supposed to happen that day and I agreed. The lady from TM also shared with me some personal things she had been through and felt we were supposed to meet that day.

We say we want to be led by God, used by God, but we don't want the inconvenience that comes with it so many times. I want to immediately recognize Him in every detail of my day (yes, even the "not so nice" parts). He can get glory in every detail of our day!