This is a story about how God takes care of us, no matter how dire a situation might seem.
Here’s the background info: Last week, Lindsie and I had been frantically packing as we prepared for this walk across the country. We’d gotten 90% of our stuff into a storage unit, but we knew there was one thing we wouldn’t be able to store: our gigantic, very heavy, hand-me-down sectional couch that had been in my family for 12+ years now.
Knowing we wouldn’t be able to store it, we wanted to at least find a good home for it. We don’t have any friends in need of a couch, so we took the next best step and tried to drop it off at a thrift store, hoping someone could then buy it cheap and use it as thoroughly as we did.
After desperately trying to acquire a truck to move this massive couch, we finally got one last Tuesday night. Lindsie and I had exactly 5 hours to pick up the truck, move the couch OUT of our home, load it onto the truck, drop it off at a thrift store, and return it to its owner…all by ourselves.
Unfortunately, we were met with bad news. No thrift stores would take it because of ONE small tear in ONE seat cushion. So we figured we’d take it to a dump. It was now about 7:30 pm, which meant we only had 2.5 hours to get the couch dumped and the truck returned. It also meant that the dump was closed for the night.
Feeling very defeated, and not sure where we would put this gigantic couch of ours (we weren’t dragging it back inside, and we essentially had to be moved out of our apartment entirely by the following day), we decided to focus on moving other large things with the truck while we still had time. Lindsie and I both said a quick prayer asking that God would help us get rid of it. We didn’t think we could deal with the burden of having to re-acquire a truck and try this all over again the next day. We were reaching our desperation point, to say the least.
Just before we left to move the other items, I suggested we put up a “FREE COUCH” sign next to our burdensome couch. You know, just in case. As we were putting the sign in place (as in, literally setting it down next to the couch), a couple that happened to be walking through the alley next to our place saw the couch and said, “Free couch? We’d love to take it, but we don’t have any way to move it.” I looked up, amazed at the convenient timing and said, “We’ll drop it off for you. Whatever you need. We just have to get rid of it before 10 o’clock tonight.”
“Well I’ve gotta call my buddy to make sure we can take it, so I’ll let you know when I talk to him.”
We exchanged numbers. About 2 hours passed. It was 9:30 and we only had about 20-ish minutes to load the coach and move it wherever this guy needed it delivered. IF he even ended up taking it in the first place.
Then, at 9:35, the guy called me and said they could take it. We just had to drop it off. After saying a quick prayer of thanks, we loaded it up. As an added blessing, their house was only about a block away from us. After a quick unloading (and a nearly-destroyed back), we returned the truck around 9:52 pm, with 8 minutes to spare.
The point of this story is simple: even in our greatest moment of desperation—a desperation you might not understand from simply reading this story, but would definitely understand if you’d been there with us as we met with defeat over and over throughout the night—God was watching out for us.
Who knows what would’ve happened if we’d asked Him for help sooner? We might’ve gotten the couch off our hands in a matter of minutes. But either way, the fact that things aligned so perfectly is far too convenient to be coincidence.
For starters, we almost didn’t even put the “FREE COUCH” sign up. Then, if we’d put it up either 3 minutes sooner or 3 minutes later, we would’ve missed the people walking by entirely. And if they’d walked by without us there, they wouldn’t have offered to take it because they wouldn’t have had a truck to pick it up. It just so happened that they were walking by RIGHT when I was able to tell them that we would drop off the couch for them. Then, they were finally able to take it off our hands just MINUTES before we had to return the truck to its owner.
All in all, it’s too incredible to be coincidence as far as we’re concerned.
God is pretty amazing. Especially when you just trust Him to be amazing for you.
As a quick update, we’re in South Dakota, preparing for our walk. Ten days from now, it begins. Crazy, right?
We’ll have more news and updates soon.
-Mike
