Last weekend I took my daughter to the store with the intention of buying her nice shoes. For the whole winter, she has worn her white snow boots. She was happy with her decision, and there are some battles I no longer fight. In the meantime, she had outgrown any regular shoes that might fit.
She was going to be performing in her first recital, and while doing my mental check of all she needed, I realized the white snow boots would not cut it, especially with the 50 degree day we were expected to have.
As we neared the front of the line for the register, I over heard an older lady. She was mad! The card company had declined her card for the purchase. She had called them up and was waiting for them to give her a piece of her mind. In the meantime, she was letting out her displeasure. She kept on announcing how much money she had in the bank and how dare they declined her purchase. The young man with her, who looked like he could be her grandson was gently trying to calm her down. She was not having it.
As a financial advisor and someone who is particular sensitive to allowing people to become a target for theft, I wanted to tell her just that. By announcing her many thousands of dollars she had in the bank, she was making herself a target. Also, from my own experience, if a transaction is being processed that isn’t in line with normal spending, they’ll block it until they can confirm it’s actually you.
Fast forward to the end of the week. Friday morning I woke up with two emails from my credit card company. Apparently, someone had tried to process two transactions that were not in line with my normal spending habits and my bank caught it and blocked it.
I laid in bed being thankful that such protections are in place.
How many times is God trying to protect us from particular situations, but because we want what we want, we don’t see it as God’s Divine Protection, and we actually get mad at what’s happening?
In that moment, I was reminded of other situations where I’ve been protected, and not only until later did I see (and sometimes still haven’t) what I was being protected from.
Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for blocking some things that could potentially harm us, but you see the danger and you stop it. Help us to not get angry, but instead to come to you and ask for your wisdom and guidance so that we might be enlightened.