Yes, God does Bless us Financially – I’m Proof

God has always been faithful in my life, in amazing ways, particularly when it comes to finances. Some of the financial windfalls are downright astounding and I would like to share them.

Just today, December 1, 2012, I went online to check my bank balance. I’m on Social Security Disability, and when the 3rd of the month falls on a Monday, you receive your benefit on the Saturday before it. Imagine my surprise when I see that my deposit is $88 more than what I normally get. The amazing thing about this is it’s not the first time this has happened. It’s not the second time. It’s the third time. Read below for the details.

This is significant right now because I just moved to a new apartment, in a new state, two months ago. I had a job, but it didn’t work out, and I was rather upset by that. I did the best I could, but when it came to taking the test that you were required to pass, I failed.

I believe God is in control, though, and if He’d wanted me to work there, I’d be there. I trust that He has something else for me. Meantime, between the check I got from the four days that I worked and the additional money from Social Security, it’s enough to pay my rent.

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In the fall of 1995, I had been working for a few years at a mattress store and was making pretty good money, but my then eight-year-old daughter wasn’t doing well. She was having trouble in school and acting out.

My husband, whom I was separated from, was coming to my apartment to watch her while I worked. Most nights I worked till 9 p.m. He’d end up staying over in my living room all weekend. I wasn’t happy about the situation, and decided I had to quit my job and find a daylight only job.

Without having another job, and remember crying into the phone to my mother, not knowing what I would do.

I had income, but it wasn’t enough without working. Bill, my husband, was many years older than me, and retired. Therefore, my daughter and I received Social Security benefits under his record, and that would continue until my daughter was 18, and I received what’s called a mother’s benefit, which would be paid until my daughter was 16.

About a week after I quit the job, I received a letter from The Social Security Administration; they had made some kind of mistake in calculating the benefits due to my daughter and I. They had corrected the mistake, and had deposited over $1,800 into my checking account.

Wow.

Obviously, the money couldn’t have come at a better time. I also found out about a county program, which helped non-skilled workers like me to obtain job skills. I took a computer class, paid for by the county, and was also found eligible for unemployment benefits due to having to quit the job because of issues with babysitting.

The computer class was a real blessing, in that I learned how to type the “right way” and eventually gained pretty good typing skills. This has always been a great help in seeking and obtaining employment, not to mention for all the writing I do!

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It was late fall of 1997, and I’d decided I had to get out of Long Island, as it was too expensive to live there as a single mother. At the urging of my husband, whom I was separated from, I decided to move to the Pittsburgh, PA, area. I found a place 35 minutes from Pittsburgh, with a very reasonable rent. The owner of the apartment complex was a born again Christian. Though I didn’t have a job and had claimed bankruptcy a few years before, he gave me a chance. My parents generously helped me out with $1,000 for the move, which was greatly needed. I never expected them to help out with that much money.
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I was fed up with the public school my daughter was attending and wanted to enroll her in private Christian school.

My mom called me to one day to tell me she had seen a show on Oprah, which featured a segment about the Children’s Scholarship Fund. It was a fund that helped people pay for private school for their children.

I sent in the application and at first it was declined but I was put on a waiting list. A few months later,  I was informed the fund would pay for half of my daughter’s tuition. And that was just the half of the story.

The registration fee for the school was $140. I really didn’t know how I was going to pay it. But God had a plan, once again.

Several years before, back in Long Island, I had met with a lawyer regarding a divorce. I started sending him money, planning to pay off the fee over time. But I never went through with it, because I really didn’t have anything extra to send him every month. Years went by, I moved out of Long Island, and I forgot about the money I’d sent him.

One day my soon to be ex, Bill, called me saying I was going to be very happy. It seems the lawyer decided to send me the money back, after all these years. The check took its time in making its way around. It first went to my old address, where Bill and I had lived together, and later that address was for a time occupied by Bill’s niece and her husband. The check then got forwarded to their new address, and it finally made its way to Bill in Pennsylvania, who had moved near us to be near our daughter.

The amount of the check? $140. The exact amount I needed to pay the registration fee.

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Money was very tight and I had more bills then I knew what to do with. Late notices and collections calls were a daily event.


My daughter had braces which cost $100 a month, and I really couldn't afford it. But, it was important to me she have nice teeth.

She had an appointment later that week, and I had fallen behind on the payments. When you were behind with payments, their policy was to only check the braces but not do anything to further treatment.

I was reading my devotional the night before her appointment (Charles Stanley) and it was a very interesting passage that spoke to my situation. To paraphrase, it said, don’t worry about how you would resolve a situation, look to the Lord and ask Him what He was going to do about it. So I asked the Lord what He would do about my situation.

The very next morning, I went online to look at my checking account. I normally did this every few days to see which checks were paid, and to avoid any unpleasant surprises, like an unexpected overdraft.

Expecting to see about $25 in my account, imagine my surprise when I saw my balance was over $2,600.

I began laughing, pointing at my computer screen like a raving lunatic.

“Ha, ha. You did it again Lord. I know its You!”

I called the bank to see where this money had come from. Once again, like so many years before, it had come from Social Security.

A call to them confirmed, that, for the second time, they had made a mistake in calculating the amount of benefits due my daughter and I. They had directly deposited the corrected amount into my account that morning.

At the dentist's office, one of the assistants came out and said there was a problem, I had money past due. I smiled, and gave them a check for the rest of the balance that was due.

My daughter has beautiful teeth.

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In my journal, I had written, “I feel like I’m going to get $10,000. I just keep feeling this amount of money being impressed upon me.”

I wrote it a second time in the journal because I felt it so strongly. About a month later, my ex-husband Bill informed me that he and his brother Walter had reached an agreement that Walter owed him some money, the origins of which dated back many years before, involving Bills divorce from his first wife and a house he owned jointly with Walter.

Walter was sending Bill a check for $10,000 to start with. The rest of the money would come in sporadic payments.

In July of 2001, Bill decided to open an account with that money, with my name on the account, in the event anything should happen to him. He was very generous with the money, giving money to our daughter to go on shopping sprees, and buying her the one thing we both wanted so badly, a computer.

I’ll never forget how excited she was when it arrived and we put it together. All she wanted to do was to go online and onto Instant Messenger. For me, it was a tremendous blessing, because I’d been freelance writing, and had to go to the public library to do my writing.

Sadly, just over a month later, Bill became ill. He was hospitalized twice, and died in September. But, thank the Lord, he had become a Christian, accepting Jesus as his savior before he passed on.

The money left in the account was mine. I was able to buy flowers for his funeral, buy clothes for my daughter for the funeral, and host a lunch after the funeral service for the family, among other things. The money helped get me through after his death, when I was having a difficult time adjusting through my grief.

I still look back at those journal entries, citing $10,000, in amazement and awe.

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I’d been working at a company that employs caregivers for senior citizens and was going to meet a family. One of the managers, who was also a nurse, was meeting me there.

After we met with the family, sitting in her van, I was asking her about Bill’s death. I described how he had died, of a bleeding ulcer, and the details surrounding his death. After hearing the details, she felt something wasn’t right with it. She encouraged me to talk to a lawyer, to see if I had a case for medical malpractice.

When I arrived home, my daughter, who obviously knew nothing of the conversation I’d just had, startled me with this:

“I think we should have daddy’s death looked into. What if they did something wrong, and he shouldn’t have died?”

I looked at her in shock. I told her I’d just had that very conversation with a nurse that evening. It wasn’t something either of us had ever brought up before.

Three years later, my daughter was awarded a large cash settlement for her father’s death.

If I hadn’t spoken with the nurse that night, it may never have been so.

My daughter generously paid off my car, bought me furniture, helped me pay some bills, and most importantly, has money for her future.

I know Bill would have given his life to see his daughter have this money, since his brother reneged on the money he owed him, and despite his wealth, never helped me out while I was raising my daughter.

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Oh, and let me not forget the time in 1990 when I had separated from my husband briefly and gotten my own apartment. My daughter was 4 years old at the time and I was struggling financially even though I’d gotten a job. I went to throw out garbage one night, lifted up the garbage can lid and saw a twenty dollar bill laying on top of it.

Something told me to look further. Below the garbage was a wallet, with no identification, but a stack of $100 dollar bills in it. Around $1,500 in all. I should mention, there were three families using these garbage cans… but I had decided to go out just then to throw out a small box, which could have waited…

Miracles do happen everyday. I don’t know why I, in particular have been so blessed so very many times. Maybe because the Lord wants me to share it through my blog and writing. I don’t know. I just know if it can happen for me, it can happen for you.