Roaches To The Rescue
I really do like bugs, I think they’re cute, and I feel sorry for them.
A few years ago, roaches came to my rescue.
How is this possible, you might ask?
Well, I was living in the Florida Panhandle at the time, in a place that was comfortable, but had it’s dangers.
It was a high crime area, and at this particular place, there were a few people who were a threat to my safety, coming around every so often to the property I was living at. A slipshod fence was built around the place, which locked from the inside, but sometimes it didn’t completely hold the dangerous folk back. If I gave more details, you’d see that there’s no exaggerating here – it was an increasingly dangerous situation, but it was handled, day by day, until another lodging could be found. It was scary…
So how did cockroaches help me at that place?
I will tell you. Towards the end of my stay there, a certain threatening person would attempt to come to the property every few days or so, harassing, yelling, making threats, and simply terrorizing in general. He was a raging alcoholic, and my dwelling was his favorite place to unleash his fury. It was a tricky situation, not something that could be easily dealt with, and at the time, I had no real understanding of why he was doing it, but that’s beside the point.
Back to the roaches…
During the last few months that I was there, the smoke detector started malfunctioning, going off and beeping for no reason. The batteries were fresh, the wiring was good, there was no reason for it to be chirping, until –
I began to notice the timing of it. It always happened when I was there alone, in the day, and right before the Problem Man began his antics.
I started to understand that the “smoke alarm” really was a smoke alarm – it began notifying me that he was approaching, giving me time to pray for protection, and that God would subdue him. Every time. For a few months this went on. The smoke detector would chirp once or twice, I’d get on my knees and quickly pray for safety, then the Problem Man would either yell something profane out at my house, or bang on the gate, or whatever he could do, but he could not come in, or enter my property. It was scary, but God was with me. So for a while, I kept it a secret from my husband, what was happening with the smoke detector when he wasn’t home, because I didn’t want him to fix it. It was my Prayer Alarm during that time. God has always protected me, sometimes in very special ways, He is so awesome!
So eventually the day came, when the alarm chirped, and my husband heard it. I said, “quick, let’s pray, ___ is coming!” My husband prayed with me, ___ did show up, and it went smoothly. Then he asked me about it, and I told him what had been going on for the past few months, how God was guarding me from ___ while I was alone all day. My husband did investigate the smoke detector, found nothing wrong, but began to pay attention to it, to find out what was going on.
One weekend, while he was home, it began to chirp. He promptly went to it, popped it open, and discovered a roach inside.
Later on, same thing happened again. Another chirp, another roach.
He said that roaches were crawling inside of it, and every time they did, it tripped the wire, and made the sound. He disconnected it, and it just hung there, on the wall, deactivated.
But it’s ok, because right after that, we moved, so the Cockroach Prayer Alert Smoke Alarm was no longer needed.
Before anyone judges me for having roaches at that place, believe me when I say that was the least of my concerns there.
Florida was a time of fun for me, yes, but there were some times of simply surviving, and that was one of them.
All of this to say, God can use ANYTHING – including lowly cockroaches.
I like and appreciate all bugs, even more now.
___ passed away shortly after we moved from that place, but I don’t know if the roaches are still there or not. If they are, I hope that they too will serve a purpose, somehow…
The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them.
Psalm 34:7
