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God Knows Best

By Melissa Markham on October 10, 2007 3:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This weekend I moaned and groaned about what a bad day we had with our yard sale. The mist, the lack of customers, the fact that I made $1.50. I also told you I had words with God. After all, he knows we are strapped and we are trying to do our best to get ourselves through this difficult time, why did he allow this to happen? Well, now I know why. Let me lead you through the steps of what the last few days has brought:

1. When the yardsale didn't go well, I found my mind turning to other ways to make money. I thought about the approximately 350 books I had in my eBay inventory. Some I have had for a couple of years and haven't been able to sell. But I thought if I lowered the price and offered them to a different audience, I could probably sell a lot of them and make some money. So Sunday, I went through my books. I set aside 12 boxes to take to a local bookseller that purchases used books. The rest I typed out into a list, alphabetized and posted on my blog and on my website.

2. By the end of the day Monday, I had sold $53.00 worth of books. Since I had sent around the book list, I also sent around a list of some other items we are selling. A friend purchased a really nice crock pot for $30.00.

3. Tuesday I took the books to the bookseller. There was a bit of miscommunication, but they ended up paying me $44.00 for about 4 boxes of books. Then the person who I was meeting after I picked up my books that the bookstore didn't want, looked through those books and she bought $14 more dollars worth.

4. So now I am up to having sold $141.00 worth of items because I didn't have a successful yardsale on Saturday.

5. Now the real kicker, the one that cinches it for me that God sees the big picture that I miss even when it is staring me right in the face.

When I chose the date for our yardsale, I went for the first Saturday in October. I hoped the weather would be pleasant. It was the first weekend after a paycheck, and in a town about 20 minutes away, there is a big flea market the same day. I thought perhaps, people would be passing by us on our way to there and we would pick up some more customers. In reality, it probably worked against us. While I was putting up my yard sale signs, I noticed that there were some auction signs. I even picked one of them up and fixed it as it had fallen over. It is for a piece of property about 1 mile from my house. When is the auction? 11 am, October 13th. What day did my neighbors and I decide to try our yardsale luck again? October 13th.

Even when I had the pieces staring me in the face, I was focused on my plan, and I wasn't looking at the bigger picture. Thankfully, God sees better than I do.