The Road To Houston: Miracles by Disguise

Have you ever experienced deja vu?

Like you’ve been somewhere or experienced something and it felt strangely familiar, as if you had either been there before or that you had somehow experienced whatever was now happening before?

This is where I found myself the day I arrived in Houston at my new place and pulled up to the stoplight right outside my apartment complex.

After the initial shock of discovering that my apartment was literally a two minute walk and up two flights of stairs from the parking garage (not at all what I was told by the leasing office), I could have cried.

How on earth were we going to get all of those heavy items out of my car and into the apartment in one piece? Loading my car up in Maryland was a 3 woman job and it was only a 30 second walk to my garage then. (We won’t even go into why I didn’t have any help from any guys!)

Here I was in Houston after driving for over 15 hours, one other person, both of us with injured backs, in the sweltering heat of the Lone Star state.

Yet, God had two miracles by disguise waiting just for me. I couldn’t see them as miracles at first though because the packaging was covered with problems.

The first miracle had been in the works a month prior. God knew that my older sister would meet a fellow Houstonian one month prior, in another country while on a vacation, (that I was supposed to be on) who would offer to help us move the heavy items out of my car, for free!

If I had driven by myself, which I was all set to do, once I decided I was moving, I would have arrived at my apartment, sat on the steps and cried once I discovered the reality of my location. I would probably still be transporting stuff from my car little by little until this day.

The forced exercise routine, i.e. this 2 minute walk back and forth to my car, would prove to be the second miracle in disguise I later discovered when Hurricane Harvey came barreling through my area a month later.

It was literally as if God had me tucked away in the far most corner of the building in my own little world so that I would be high and dry during the storm. Thankfully, I was not physically affected by it.

The last miracle in disguise was my deja vu moment I mentioned above.

So here we were sitting at the stoplight right outside the complex, heading to get something to eat and this sudden familiarity came over me, as if I had been in this very same place before.

The biggest visual reminder sat before me across the street as I looked up and saw a building that was very familiar. I was in the very same place across the street less than a year ago almost to the date.

Except that day, I had no idea that I would be living in this very same area, literally right across the street, less than a year later.

If you have been following The Road to Houston series, you know that this entire move was one of faith, and very little planning, which is so not me.

I visited Houston the year before after a good friend of mine had recently relocated. The day I was leaving to head back to Maryland, I decided to pass some time before heading to the airport so I went to visit some apartments just for fun (or so I thought).

The very first apartment I viewed the year before was the same building I was looking at while at the stoplight that day after arriving in Houston. I remember visiting the area and saying to myself that it was a nice area, but honestly the apartments were just too expensive.

I had not done much research when deciding to move so I had no idea that where I had chosen to move was anywhere near that area I had initially looked at.

Actually, I thought where I had looked last year was on the east side of Houston, completely on the opposite side of town. All I could do was laugh, shake my head and say “Lord you are funny!”

If I wasn’t sure before, my heart and mind were settled in that very moment that I was indeed exactly where God wanted me to be.

What may have been wrapped in a package of difficulties and dilemmas turned out to be miracles by disguise and opportunities for my faith to be stretched as once again God proved to be faithful.

Be sure to check back next week as I close out the series on The Road to Houston. If you missed any of the previous posts, be sure to check them out here:

The Road To Houston: Journey To The Land Flowing With Milk And Honey