The Exposed Evening

So, it was a late evening in 1979 and I was at work.

I was working in Clearwater Florida about 40 miles from my home in St. Petersburg. I had chosen to work a night shift job so my husband could work a daytime job, so we could get ahead financially. It was an easy, fun position I worked at and I really enjoyed it. Being so young with two children it allowed me a bit of  freedom I still longed for as well. To get away a bit.

I was very good at my job  and was moved into a training position early on for all the new people we hired. It was more money and responsibility and I loved it.

I had considered going into management at this point with this company but thought to myself, this isn't what I want to do for my life work. So I was making decisions about what I really wanted to do with myself later in a career.
I had been there for about two years at this point and was thinking it may be time for a career change.
 

Often in my life the LORD had come to me to speak to me. Sometimes audibly and sometimes through very strong impressions on my heart.

So, on this particular night, as I was working early on in my shift, I kept hearing the LORD speak to me. It was a very strong impression I was receiving. More than once I heard him call my name. I stopped each time I heard HIS voice but wasn't sure why I was hearing it. Each time I heard HIM call me, there was then silence. HE (GOD) had never spoken to me in a work place situation before and I wondered if I was really hearing HIM or was it my imagination? (Later on in my life HE would speak to me again at work, but this was the first time, at this point)

Did HE (GOD) want me to go to an area where I was alone and sit and listen I wondered? So, I excused myself from my position and went into the main office area where there was no one around.
I locked the door and sat and waited on GOD.

I said to the LORD, "Yes, I know I heard you"! Then it happened, right there at work! HE spoke to me clearly, as if HE were standing right in front of me! I heard HIS voice.

I felt he was telling me to "GO HOME NOW". I wondered for a moment, really? Go home now? I felt as if HE also was implying  to leave this place permanently, literally at that very moment.  
My shift wasn't over for 6 hours yet. But again I felt HIM say to me strongly, "LEAVE HERE NOW, GO HOME"! With that, I laid down on the floor, Hands out in front of me, in a prayerful and worshipping kind of way and said to HIM, "OK, I'll quit and go home right now as you request"! I repented then for questioning HIM in this and thought to myself, something must be going on at home, The LORD wants me to leave this all behind, NOW!
I have to leave right now!

 

With that, I stood up, walked over to the box that held my time card and punched out. I went into the lobby where my boss was and handed him my apron and badge and said, "I'm leaving tonight permanently, right now actually, for good.  I'll be back at the end of the week to collect my paycheck".  My boss was floored! He said to me, "you can't leave here now, you have a shift to finish, I'm depending on you, your my best worker Teri"! I smiled at him and explained this conversation wasn't up for discussion. I thanked him for the position and all his kindness towards me, and I turned and headed to the parking lot and to my car. It was really kind of sad in a way! But I had to do as I felt the LORD instructed me, that was paramount!
 

Once in my car, I felt so strange, I asked GOD, why had HE  requested this of me? What is happening at home? Why now?
It didn't really matter though, If GOD say's to go home, I am going home! HE did not answer me, I was simply feeling the need now more than before to continue home.

I started my trek home praying all the way.

When I got a block from my home I literally heard the LORD say out loud, "SHUT YOUR LIGHTS OFF"!
"Really, I replied"?

OK, I said out loud, and I did just that. I shut the car lights off! That was weird, I know suspected something horrible was going on! I was kind of shaking, what was I going to find?
 

I pulled up in front of the house, and the house looked dark inside. I shut the car off, walked up to the house and opened the front door.
 

There on the couch to my great surprise, in my living room, in the dark ,was my neighbor friend and my husband. 
My neighbor was a sweet  girlfriend of mine!

I was absolutely shocked!

I had no idea at all what I was going to find! This girlfriend was such a sweet girl! I had always liked her so much.
"What is going on here I asked"?

She jumped up and apologized profusely over and over to me for being there alone with my husband in the dark, she begged me to forgive her, over and over, and she then ran out the front door crying. I was speechless.
The LORD wanted me to know what was happening!

 

It was the beginning of the end of my first marriage.

The next day, I told my husband that the LORD had spoken to me  when I was at work and demanded I come home, quit my job and go home now! I told him I knew nothing about this friend of mine and him. My husband knew that was true, it all had just started, there was no way I could have known.

He was freaked out, to say the least, as he knew that the LORD had often spoken to me many times in my life and was dumbfounded that the LORD literally exposed his and her behavior to me.

I had no idea that this affair was going on, none at all!

It made for an easy transition out of the marriage. It was hard on me and the children but it was somehow OK too.
The LORD later spoke to me audibly and said to me,
"I have removed your lover and friend", I found that amazing. HE did not call my husband at the time, "my husband", but just simply, my lover and friend. Oddly, that is always how I actually felt about my first husband. Like we were just great friends that took our relationship farther than it should have gone.
This was very perplexing to me. It went against everything I had believed in. Had I been taught wrong?

 

My point here in sharing this sad, true portion of my life is this, GOD will do what HE desires to do in our lives. If HE wants the truth to be seen, HE will expose it. Sometimes HE does it this way for us, sometimes HE doesn't. I am grateful for what HE has led me through in my life. Even if it was hard!

I am not a perfect person. Dear reader please don't think I'm painting myself out to be a saint, the LORD disciplines me as I need it too. I have made many mistakes along the way myself.

This I know, truth in the spiritual realm is stranger than any fiction that could ever be written.

GOD will do what is right for our lives, if we like it or not!
We are here to learn and grow! 
 I'm forever grateful for my lessons.

This night was just a drop in the bucket of life for me.
My experiences have always been bizarre by most standards. Sometimes when you think "a little birdie" told someone what you have done, or what someone else has done to you.....Think again...It may not be a bird at all, it could be GOD himself exposing us, for our own good!

 

The GIFT

So, it was 1978. The LORD had  guided me to help a young mother and her sister through some tuff times for them. The Husband of the sister worked in a chemical company that produced famous brand Shampoos and Body lotions and the like.

A few miracles had taken place while we all walked a very difficult road together for a season and The husband wanted to do something for me to repay their gratitude. How silly I thought, I hadn't done anything but pray for them and help them through a hard few years.. The husband and his wife had come to my attention through her sister and we all experienced the GRACE of GOD in miraculous ways together over a four year period. It all had nothing whatsoever to do with me. It was the LORD who blessed us all! I was just the blessed human who experienced the miracles along side these folks.

The husband would not take no for an answer from me! He kept offering me money, gifts, and the like, to repay me for my kindness.  I kept turning him down, firmly no! No favor I pleaded, PLEASE, stop!

He was so determined to do something for me, thinking I deserved it somehow. He was really very sweet, and thankful.

So being that he worked in management for a major chemical company he choose to do something for us in a practical manner. He drove by my home very early one day and left two, one gallon bottles of the company's most famous shampoo and conditioner on the door step.  I was passing the front window that morning and I saw something go by the house,  and looked quickly out the window as he dropped off "something". I then watched him get into his car, close the door, and then Drive away,  I got up from the kitchen table and went to the door wondering what had just happened here? I saw the two gallon jugs sitting there on the bricks with a note and curly colored confetti attached to them. The note read "please except SOMETHING for our gratitude", we love you! After I read the note, I laughed and said to myself, "well now this is a great gift", we can surly all use this! 

With that I closed the door and went into the house and put the shampoo and conditioner in the shower and didn't think of it again!

It just left my thoughts.

We used the "gift" every night with every shower, my husband and my two boys and myself. I marveled at how having a gallon of this stuff really made a difference as it seemed to never run out.

I thought to myself, from now on, I'm always buying in this bulk size!  It lasts forever! And again I forgot about it.

Life went on and showers happened every night!

A year later I was at the store and I was going over my grocery list. I thought to myself, gee, I'm so sick of that gallon of shampoo, perhaps I should get something new? I was sick of looking at the big jug on the shelf in the bathroom! But then I thought, "well, it's more frugal to wait until it runs out I guess, were not millionaires, I won't spend the grocery money on shampoo if I still have some left, It does smell really good and heck, we have hardly used any of the conditioner"!

So with that I again just forgot about it.

A year later, YES, a year later, I looked at that large jug of shampoo and conditioner and said, "HEY, wait a minute here, this is still half full"! "How can that be"? "What's going on here"? I asked my boys and husband if they remembered the kind husband two years ago that dropped this off to us as a gift? They all said, "yes", I said, hey guy's, that was two years ago! We still have shampoo and conditioner left! This is a miracle! There is no other way to explain it. My oldest son Jason said "Mom, I use that every night" I said as do I, and I use it on your brother, and my husband said I have also only used that stuff! We all sat there quietly for a moment and then just burst into laughter! Why? Shampoo? Really?

YES, really! It was an anointed gift. GOD showed us great favor.

We to this day still talk about the miraculous shampoo incident.

Miracles happen every day, we don't always recognize them but none the less they happen!

I'm grateful, very grateful to see how GOD cares for us in ways we would never expect!

It's hard to believe I just forgot about it over and over for two years. I wonder if the LORD allowed me to "Not recall" how long we were using the "gift" so we would experience that wonderful moment together?

Truth my friend is always stranger than fiction!