Angels in Disguise

So.......visiting the Long Island Beach tonight nearly cost me what I'm guessing would have been about $500..............

Let me back up. I came to Island Park, New York for the weekend to cover the dedication of the first home rebuilt by Samaritan's Purse after Hurricane Sandy, which was today. {Warning - long story coming up}

I bid farewell to the SP folks at the church, and they had told me where I could go to be on an ocean beach. It wasn't far away, so I decided to go. I got there at about 8:40, so it was definitely past dusk. Tried to take some pictures, and started getting my feet wet wading. Then I decided to put my camera, my phone, my flip flops, and my rental car keys together in a pile so that I could wade without worrying about my stuff getting wet.

That was shortly after 8:50. I quickly realized that the waves were going further in than I expected, so I grabbed my pile of stuff and moved it to a different place. I debated moving it further inland, but as I had walked onto the beach a beach police patrol vehicle had driven by. I could see his lights down the beach, and didn't want to take the chance that he would run over my stuff! So I put it down in a new place, but still rather uncomfortably close to the water.

A tiny bit later, I went to move it again or something, and in picking up my stuff I realized that my car keys were not right there with the other stuff. I knew I was in trouble. I turned up my phone screen brightness to use as a flashlight and started looking for the keys. Thankfully there was a pile of rocks that created a boundary marking point on one side of the area. I knew my keys had to be between where I first put my stuff and where the rocks were, a distance of maybe 20 yards. Unless the waves had already carried them away....................

The phone did no good. I got on my hands and knees and crawled along the track I had thought I walked between the two places. No luck. About that time, the police car came back toward where I was. I walked over to him and flagged him down. He had someone in the back, I think a kid who was breaking curfew or something. He didn't have a flashlight, but he turned his floodlight on and drove between the two points where I thought it was three times as I walked alongside looking. Nothing. He had to take the kid home, and said I should call a tow truck if I couldn't find them.

Long before that point, I had been praying asking God to please help me find my keys. I knew He knew where they are, and I sure would like to have them!!! I had noticed that the keys said on them "average replacement cost is $225." And if I followed the policemen's suggestion, I'd have to pay a good bit to have it towed, most likely plus a chunk more for a locksmith to get me into the car so I could get my stuff out. After the police man left, I walked back and forth I don't know how many times between the two points, shuffling my feet in the sand, just hoping that I would run into the keys with my feet. "Please guide my steps," I prayed. A knot was forming in my stomach as I thought about how much this would cost. And yes, I was definitely worried.

By 9:08, I realized I probably was not going to find the keys. And that I needed to call someone from SP to come pick me up before it got too much later. I didn't have anyone's number who was at the church (about 15 minutes away) - at least not on my phone. It was in my notebook in my car, which I couldn't get into. I did have the videographer's number in my phone, but he was at his hotel, 30 minutes away. I called him and asked him to send me the site manager's number. When I got off the phone with him and waited for the text message, I noticed I only had one bar of battery left on my phone. That made me honestly scared for the first time. "God help me," I said, knowing I was fixing to really be in a mess.

A lady and two gentlemen, one with a little kid on his shoulders walked over to me and asked if I had lost something. I questioned for a moment how wise it was to tell complete strangers that I was locked out of my car and pretty much stranded. But it was obvious that I was looking for something, and I didn't have much choice. I told them I had lost my car keys, and where I thought they ought to be, but that I was just calling a friend to get me. It was 9:13, and the text message came as I was talking to them. I called the SP site manager's number. It rang maybe four or five times, no answer. But then I hung up, because those three angels in disguise had called out to me that they found my keys. Yep, I had been looking for those silly things for 15-20 minutes, and they found them in about three minutes.

They handed me the keys, and I asked them if they would come with me to my car so that I could give them some money as a thank you. But they didn't want anything. I told them how very grateful I was. I can't even express how relieved I was about it! Oh my....God certainly provided!!!!

They walked away down the beach, and I went back to enjoying wading a bit, since I had barely had time to do so yet. But this time, I kept all of my stuff with me, you'd better believe it. Standing there, the waves crashing against my legs, I recovered a little bit from the nervous tension I had been under for the past several minutes. And just thanked God. It was definitely a reminder that He will take care of me, even when I'm not so smart and even in the "little" things.

God is so very amazingly good! And yes, God would be just as amazingly good if I hadn't ever found my keys, or if the ocean had swept them away. But I give Him lots of thanks for the fact that in this case He decided to protect and bless me, despite my smidgen of stupidity. :)