Sometimes I write poetry as a healing process not just for myself, but for others who read my poetry and stories.
Things may not always go the way we expect, but the beauty of life is having faith in God that things will turn out alright in the end.
Life is a journey and we need to embrace it. Some problems are simple with an easy fix, but others are more complex with the need for some divine intervention. The beauty of that is, no situation is permanent.
Let me tell you a little story.
My husband and I had been apartment hunting for the past year, and because we don’t like being last-minute people we had selected an apartment that we looked to move into almost a year in advance.
Getting closer to the proposed move-in date about 6 months to time. We went to the apartment to try and lock in our choice. They told us they are unable to lock it in that early and thus we would have to come back a little closer to time, say 90 days.
We waited for the 90-day mark and filled in an online application for the apartment, then we called in and finally verbally locked in the apartment with the leasing agent- and so we thought.
We asked them when we could sign the lease, they told us 60 days to 2 weeks before the move-in date.
At that time we had also received a notification from our current apartment letting us know our unit had been given away because we had not renewed our lease for the following year. I mean that was fine given the fact that we had plans on moving out anyway.
60 days to move in we started requesting the unit lease from the new apartment again. This time they were firm on sending it to us only 2 weeks before our move-in. So my husband and I decided to pull the move-in date back a week to give us a 3 weeks wiggle room between our lease end date, just in case of any mishaps that could occur, and also to not put too much pressure on the moving process.
Finally, we were two weeks to move in and called the apartment to request a lease. This time they verbally gave us the number of the unit we had been assigned to, but did not send us a lease. They told us we would have to sign only around a week to move in. At this point, we were getting a little worried, but comforted by the fact that they had told us our future unit number.
1 1/2 Weeks to move in we called once more asking for the lease. This time they told us our apartment was not available and there was nothing they could do. WHAT!!!! This was shocking! An apartment we had planned for a year in advance was going to disappoint us. We tried to speak to them about our situation, but we were not getting any favorable answers. The manager said the apartment complex had been full for months with hopes people would move out, but people weren’t making moves and unfortunately, their hands were tied. This was very unpleasant to hear, but what could we do? So we decided to take matters into our own hands. LOL No we did not attack them!! at least not physically, hehe. We took it to the Lord in prayer and started apartment hunting once again, this time with only about 3 weeks left on our current lease.
It felt like we were in a pressure cooker because none of the apartments fit all our preferences.
They were either too expensive, too small, not neat, in a relatively unsafe area, or just not for us. From the apartments we went to see it was either one thing wrong or everything wrong. I mean that’s why we do these things in advance and not just a week or two to move in!
We finally found one we thought was ok. We filled in the application, but just before we hit the send button. We decided to pray again about our situation…. Guess what? After spending almost an hour filling out this form we decided not to click submit. I guess the Holy Spirit was leading us to wait for what would happen next.
The following day my husband got a conviction to call the initial apartment we had been looking forward to moving into which disappointed us. He said he wanted to give it one last try.
Well, this time when he called, the agent remembered he had spoken to him about a week ago and said, ” Oh, I remember you. I wanted to reach out to you but forgot. Just after our conversation, a vacancy became available which meets all but one of your preferences. It’s on the 1st floor and has parking, however, it faces the road, which we know you didn’t want a main road facing apartment.
My husband said it was fine we would take it and within that very hour, our lease was sent to us.
Now that I am in the apartment I am grateful to God that we did not get all the preference we wanted in terms of getting a road-facing apartment. I will explain why in pt 2.
I learned valuable lessons that day, God gives us what is best for us not what we think is best for us.
God shows up for his children, even when all hope seems lost. He shows up and shows off that he can make the most hopeless situation hopeful.
Easier said than done, but try to have faith, it is truly the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen. You never know how God is working in the background. After we prayed and decided not to sign the lease we had no idea we would get our desired apartment back, but we had faith that God would find us something better – which He did!!
