I can't count the times I heard, "God comes, but in His time." What does that mean? God created man and man created the means of telling time through calendars and clocks and such, so how can He come in His own time? Is there another time that humans are not familiar with? I understand that in the Old Testament, since that is when God created time, it may have taken more than a week to create the world and the accounting is more for something so that even the feeblest of minds can comprehend, but is there an entire different dimension of time that only God follows? It just never made sense to me. Until the morning of October 4, 2012.
I had been awoken around 9:30 with a loud knock on the door and a sheriff's deputy (who was kinda cute, by the way!) accompanied by the manager of the apartment complex and the locksmith changing the lock on the door. I was being evicted for non-payment. The day before I had received my first disability check from Social Security and got a money order for the amount of September's rent, which was past due. I tried to give it to the manager but he refused because the eviction process was too far along. After having been homeless from November 4, 2010 to April 21, 2012, I was about to be homeless again. Not even six months after getting my own place, I was going to be a nomad, moving every other month or so. And my poor cats. Cats are not like dogs; dogs crave adventure while cats crave stability and routine. In the time I was without a home, they were first being taken care of by a couple, who then split with the main caretaker moving 600 miles away. The secondary caretaker was not good at taking care of cats and it showed. So in February 2012, after staying in one place for almost a year, they were taken to another place that already had two cats. It was kind of funny though; the second place was the neighbor of the crazy house I stayed in and their two cats names were Mickey (after Mick Jagger) and MeMe (because it was all about her). My two cats were Ming (a Siamese mix) and Mowgli (the girl-cat version of the Jungle Boy). Four cats all starting with the letter M. They could have monogrammed the entire cat collection of bowls, etc and it would have worked for all of them! But back to the issue at hand. I was going to be homeless, but what was going to happen to my senior cats?
After finding out that the apartment complex would not accept my back rent the day before, I had rented a U-Haul and bought some boxes. However, I couldn't bring myself to put the boxes together. I had done some laundry the night before but they locked the room before I could get it out. (The week before I had put $30 on my laundry card, so I wanted to use at least some of it.) I put on my robe and went to the laundry room to fetch my clothes. While there, I saw a young family and found out they had just moved in. I tried to sell them my card, but they didn't want to buy it. I warned them about paying their rent on time, as the landlord didn't mess around. They didn't even care that I was at the mercy of the federal government as I waited for a lump sum from Social Security. After folding my clothes, I went back to the apartment to start my day and somehow move as much as I could out of my apartment and back into storage.
After reading my Bible and saying my prayers (as I do every morning), I sat down to have breakfast. About halfway through my yogurt, the phone rang. It was Jason at my bank. He was calling to tell me a large sum of money had been deposited in my account overnight. I told him that, yes, I know that Social Security had put my first check of $1510 in the account a day ago. He told me that there were two more deposits totaling more than $10,000! I asked him where it came from and he told me Social Security. The lump sum had come! In God's time.
Because I couldn't comprehend in totality all that Jason was telling me, I asked what he was doing the rest of the day because I would pay him to help me move. He suggested I ask how much it would cost to stay there. Wow. I had not even thought of that. I would end up paying all of those costs anyway plus have an eviction on my record if I left. I thanked him and hung up the phone.
The day before, as I was leaving the apartment to go get the U-Haul, I met a lady who gave me a bag of groceries. She didn't know me and I didn't know her, but she said that she helped at the local food bank and brought extra groceries home for her neighbors. I was flabbergasted. Here I was, a perfect stranger, and she was giving me something she had worked for. Although I had plenty of food, I knew a lot of people who didn't. I figured I would give it to them. I thanked her and told her of my pressing issue of homelessness. She said she would pray for me. Later that evening, I went to her apartment and we exchanged phone numbers. When I got off the phone with Jason the banker, my neighbor was the first person I called to thank her for her prayers. Towards the end of that call, another call came in. It was the California Highway Patrol asking if I would like to come in for an interview as a 9-1-1 dispatcher. Yes, my life was full of cliches that morning. 'In God's time' and 'when it rains, it pours'.
My next phone call was to the apartment office where I asked if I could stay. I wasn't enamored with the place or its managing methods, but I signed a contract stating I would stay for a year and I don't like to break my word. I know it's old-fashioned, but I believe in a person's word. That is why I wanted to stay. That, and I would be able to stay in a place longer than six months. Six-thousand dollars later, I was paid up until the end of the year and in my apartment until April 30, 2013, as long as I paid the rent on time. I am waiting for a Section 8 voucher, so I would only have to pay $500 a month, but they have none available right now. But that's okay, because I am not homeless. I am where I am supposed to be, in God's time.
Footnote: I just realized, while writing this, that October 4, 2012, is exactly 20 years to the day since I was baptized.
In His time.
