Perfect Timing

I received an email about a month ago letting me know that the rewards points for the vitamins I buy would be expiring yesterday if I didn’t purchase more vitamins and log into the website to put in the codes. I don’t use vitamins as a rule, but I do buy cod liver oil in gel capsule form because someone who used to cut my hair who was a long hair care specialist told me that was one way to grow healthy hair. Back then my hair and skin tended to be dry and my hair tended to be very hard to grow, and he recommended cod liver oil as a way of helping to make my hair and skin healthier. It definitely worked, and I also discovered the benefits to my digestive system and my overall health and well being. In addition to the healthy Omega-3 Fatty Acids, there is also Vitamin D that many people are deficient in, and having that extra boost can mean the difference in energy levels, sleep quality and a stronger immune system. I don’t take several a day as the bottle recommends, just one because I don’t want to overdo anything, and that one has been all I’ve needed.

I’m always looking for sales on everything, and so I had been buying the store brand at one of my local pharmacies, but then about a year and a half ago I started finding sales on another brand that also had an online rewards system that gave you points every time you bought a container. The points add up to coupons, and it takes a lot of points to get the coupons, but every time I found a sale I’d buy some and it started adding up. I got up to the level of a $3 coupon, and I only needed three more bottles to get to the $7 level, but then I stopped finding the sales and I didn’t need any more anyway, so I just let the points sit there, not realizing they’d be expiring if I didn’t buy any on a regular basis. But then I got the email and I started to look around for sales, and suddenly I couldn’t find cod liver oil anywhere. All of the other vitamins are much more expensive – that was one reason the man who did my hair recommended the cod liver oil to begin with. It’s a much cheaper version of fish oil and it actually has lots of Vitamin D which the fish oil doesn’t have. So I figured I’d just have to accept the $3 coupon and let the rest of the points expire, but the Lord started to tell me that I needed to wait. It seemed such a silly thing to wait on the Lord for, but I’ve gotten used to listening to Him even when I don’t understand Him at all, and He just kept saying to wait even though the day was getting closer and closer to when the points would expire and although I kept looking in every store, no one had cod liver oil anywhere.

Then on Friday I received another email that they were giving me a grace period of another two days, and so I went back out looking when I was on my way shopping on Saturday. But still no cod liver oil and I was beginning to think that maybe the Lord wanted me to stop buying that brand or something – maybe He didn’t want me to get any coupons. But close to the end of the day, when I was on my way home from the last place where I was shopping, He sent me into a pharmacy, the only one I hadn’t checked in yet and one that is only a few blocks away from where I live, and they were having a buy one get one for half off sale, and if you bought $20 worth you’d get a coupon for $5 loaded onto your shopper’s rewards card for anything in the store. In order to get to the $7 coupon level I needed to buy at least three bottles and there were four bottles of cod liver oil left. The price with the sale came to $20.96, so I had my coupon for the store and enough bottles to get the coupon online when I got home and entered my codes.

Earlier in the day I’d gone to one of my favorite thrift stores, and when I walked in the door there was a dress waiting for me. I’d been planning to go to the train station first to put more money on my Metrocard, but the Lord told me to go to the thrift store first. When I walked in the door and saw the dress I knew why. The store had just opened, and the dress was so amazing it would have been gone in a second if I hadn’t gone in when the Lord told me to. It was hanging in a prominent place right as I came in, so it was the first thing I saw and I knew it was for me without even trying it on. I did some more shopping and found some really great things as I always do, but I knew that dress was what I’d really been sent in there for. When I got home I looked up the store where the dress came from online and found out that it’s a very chic bridal store that also carries dresses for the wedding party and special events. The dress is not a long one, but it’s absolutely gorgeous. Very understated chic and very well made. It looked brand new and it’s got to be at least a $500 dress and the woman at the thrift store sold it to me for $6. If I hadn’t been listening to the Lord I simply would not have gotten it. As it is, He told me that it’s the dress I’m going to wear to the wedding of someone I love dearly, someone He gave me a word for back in March that she was going to be married this year. He keeps arranging things about that wedding, though neither of us has seen hide nor hair of the man, but He’s arranged everything including her entire trousseau, and He’s had me be the one to find every piece and bring it to her. I’d been wondering what I was going to wear – I have lots of beautiful things now that He’s been taking me thrift store shopping – but there was nothing that seemed just right. The dress that I bought yesterday is perfect, and it was just another way that He was saying, “Now are you going to trust me?”

God is a God of the details as well as the big picture. He’s a God that cares about the smallest things in our lives as well as the really big ones. He’s also a God of perfect timing. When we wait on Him we will never be disappointed. (Isaiah 49:23) It’s hard waiting sometimes – I know it can seem very frustrating and almost nerve wracking at times because I’ve been there when He’s been saying, “Just wait,” and I have wanted to scream and cry and yell and run around the neighborhood like a crazy person because I was so stressed out and worried and anxious. But every time when He says wait, I understand when what He has promised does happen that there was a reason for the wait. That there was something or many somethings that had to be put into place before everything was ready and the story could be completed. I’m always saying, “But I’m ready now!” But He really knows best – He always does.  There’s a saying we have in church, “God’s never late, He’s always right on time,” and that saying is true.  Just at that final moment when you think maybe He’s forgotten, just at the end of the day when you’re starting to think He doesn’t want you to do what you thought He wanted you to do, just at that moment when you’ve come to the end of your own understanding of how things could actually happen, that’s when things happen, that’s when your miracle comes, that’s when the doors open and the blessing falls. And when we can wait for His blessing, He always makes it an even bigger one than we could imagine. A double blessing, a double portion, four instead of two with 50% off and a two coupons instead of one, the most perfectly beautiful dress, one that you would never have imagined but one that you know is exactly what you would have wanted if you ever thought you could afford it, the answer to your prayer that answered even more than your heart dared to ask for.

Blessings,

Jannie Susan