Welcome to another entry of God’s Mysterious Ways, where I write about things that appear to be more than just coincidences, where God may very well indeed have a hand behind it, which for today is with something that happened more than four years ago now with my home security system.
When I decided to finally move from Boston to Toledo to live with my partner at his home, I opted to upgrade his alarm system, which was rather outdated, mostly for my own peace of mind. On the day the installer came, I was told the system upgrade would probably take a full day to complete. Little did they, nor I, know just how complex the upgrade would be. After a full day of being there and wires exposed everywhere, I was told they would have to return the next day to continue. When the next day arrived though, they came and left in a very short period of time, never to return again, leaving me wondering what the heck was going on. After repeated phone calls to the alarm company, I learned they had abandoned my job for personal reasons, which left me hanging with a system that was no longer operational. It took several weeks and countless hours for the security company to rectify the situation he had left behind. In the end, it took about a month to get my alarm system fully operational, all because of the mess the original technician had left behind. Needless to say, I was quite angry by that point and told the company to never send this installer out to my house ever again. Whenever I had a service call with my alarm over the years that followed, I made sure to ask who the installer was, always ensuring it wasn’t this original technician. Yes, I was harboring a resentment, yet never even saw it that way, and felt my actions were truly justified. In the end, I think God saw it was finally time for me to forgive, because what happened just recently, made sure to cross our paths again.
I had to set up a service call for a minor issue with my alarm system about a week ago now, and as always, I inquired way ahead of time who the installer was. After making sure it wasn’t that original technician, I moved on with my life as always. But, the day before that appointment, I received an odd phone call from them that told me I needed to call their operational team who coordinates the installers schedules. During that phone call, I learned that the window they were supposed to arrive had somehow switched from the time I originally established. Unfortunately, the time they had moved me to no longer worked with my schedule, which led to management having to switch me back to the 8am to 12pm time slot. I never thought to ask after all that, who the installer was going to be, because I had been so caught up with frustration over the time mishap. So, when the service installer showed up at my door the next morning, the first thing he said was, “Do you remember me?” And for the life of me, I didn’t. Yet, when they introduced themselves, I suddenly remembered, and it was then I froze. Part of me felt myself clench in frustration, while another part of me said that maybe it was time to finally let my resentment go.
As this installer stood before me, they apologized and told me that they had been going through a divorce during the week I was being installed and a huge fight had ensued over custody of their kid, which had forced them to take the rest of the week off to handle matters. After hearing that, I had much compassion and knew I needed to forgive, which honestly, I look back and wished I had done so long ago. After shaking hands and saying I forgave them, I could see the tension in their eyes lighten. They told me that every time they had done an install anywhere near my home in all the past years that had passed, they had always wanted to come back here and apologize, but the company had refused to allow them to make any contact with me, all because of the words I had originally expressed in anger.
I must admit I have some sadness that it took well over four years for me to let this go and offer my forgiveness to someone who deserved it long ago. Yet I’m incredibly grateful that the Universe saw fit to bring two people together, one who seriously needed to let a resentment go, and one who humbly sought nothing but forgiveness from them. How they got assigned to my service call in the first place is honestly beyond my understanding, given the red flag that had been placed on my account and given the number of installers the company uses. Yet, that’s precisely the reason why I feel this is just another great example of God’s mysterious ways…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
