Wednesday, July 21, 2021

😎🐫🎤 Christ’s peace be with you. 

“It was no accident me finding you

Someone had a hand in it

Long before we ever knew…”

Can you name that song and artist? 

It was a Wednesday in August of 2000.  It was a BAD morning and I absolutely did not want to get out of bed.  Five months earlier I had to tell my young daughters that their dad and I were getting divorced.  I did my best to stay strong through that process, but it all came crashing down that Wednesday.  The day before was my final divorce hearing and overnight, it all became real.  Hopes and dreams shattered.  At that time, I was working at a bank and just recently passed my life, health, and annuity licensure test.  Lying in bed that Wednesday, I got myself motivated to go to work with the sole purpose of selling an annuity that day.  I got ready for the day and the girls off to school, then headed to work.  The bank opened at 9 a.m. and by 10 a.m. I had my annuity sale.  Woot Woot!  Yes!  I accomplished my goal.  As I was standing behind the teller line making the deposit, a guy (who had never been in our branch before) walked in and asked for a notary.  I waved him forward and said, “That’s me.  Come on up.”  I’ll spare you all the fine details, but as I looked though his documents, I looked up and said “Getting divorced?  Mine was finalized yesterday.”  And that’s where mine and Brian’s story began.  Just shy of a year later, we were married and in a couple weeks we’ll be celebrating our 20^th anniversary.  That turned out to be a great day and I, with God’s push out of bed that morning, accomplished goals I never even imagined.  God took all that hurt, pain, anger, and fear and presented it to me as a blessing beyond my vision.

Fast forward to last Saturday.  Brian and I went to a free Tracy Byrd concert.  It was inside and we had been to a concert at this venue about a year prior, so we kind of figured it would be set up the same was with chairs.  Turns out they only had a small number of chairs set up and people brought fold up chairs.  Who knew?  Not us, so we really weren’t prepared.  During the opening acts, we started off standing to the right of the stage about a third of the way from the stage.  I spotted a place on the left side of the stage right by the first row of chairs, so we moved over there.  After two opening acts, as they were setting the stage for Tracy and his band, they started to set up his merch table right by where we were standing.  They displayed a guitar at the end of the table closest to us.  It was a “Keeper of the Stars guitar”.  I was like, “Babe!  Go check that out!”  The lyrics to OUR marriage song was written on the guitar and signed by Tracy.  This was a once in a lifetime opportunity for us and our 20^th anniversary, so we purchased it.

Well, it turned out that the guitar came with a meet and greet session with Tracy after the concert, in which he personalized the guitar for us. 

What a great gift the Lord provided us.  And how different would mine and Brian’s and everyone else’s lives would have been from that point, if I wouldn’t have listened to God pushing me out the door that morning and making me go to work.  You know, He uses things that are absolutely unrelated to get us to where we need to be, so that we can receive His blessings.  Please, please listen to His calling and nudges, especially when they may seem like nothing.  I believe it’s in those unexpected moments that we receive our greatest blessings. 

Bless others and be blessed. 

If the Lord has touched you in some way with His message today, I ask that you pay it forward by sharing this message, so that you and He may also bless others.  Click subscript to receive your message every Wednesday.

#TracyByrd – Keeper of the Stars