WARNING: God Stuff / DISCLAIMER: I'm still an atheist.
First incident: My ex-SO and I were homeless. We spent most days looking for change on the ground to buy something to eat.
One day we had gathered about two dollars and decided we'd split a hot dog and chips at a local restaurant. We went in, sat down, ordered, and counted out our change as we waited.
There was a man in the booth in front of us that kept looking over his shoulder at our table. If I were to say "overweight, homeless veteran with a beard and scruffy hair" you can probably picture EXACTLY what this guy looked like. Finally after his 4th or 5th look back he turns to my SO and I and says, "Mind if I join you two?" We had nothing to lose so we said yes.
He grabs a chair from a near-by table and sits at the end of the booth between us and starts talking. He gestures to our piles of dirty pennies and nickles and says he's been where we are before. He knows how it feels to be down on your luck and have absolutely nothing to your name.
The waitress comes back with our hot dog and chips and he tells her that we don't need it. We both look at him like, "What the hell, Man?" and he says to the waitress, "Bring back the menus. They need to order a real meal." Then he looks to us and says, "Don't worry, it's on me."
She brings back the menus and we order big, hearty plates of food. While we wait he continues to tell us about when he was less fortunate and the struggles he went through and then asked us about our story. Food comes and we explain things to him between bites. We have a long conversation about how life is never fair and his main parting message was that we needed to keep our heads up because eventually things WILL get better.
We finish our food and he insists we order some pie to take with us. We do because at this point it was clear there was no arguing with this guy. We get our pie and we all stand. The man tells us his name is Michael Grey and writes a phone number down on a napkin and hands it to me with a twenty dollar bill. He says, "That should keep you on the dollar menu for a few days and I'd like you two to give me a call tomorrow to let me know you're alright. It's supposed to get really cold out tonight."
So, Michael pays for all the food and my SO and I put our coats on. Michael walks out the front door of the restaurant before I get a chance to thank him again and I quickly zip my coat and run out the door after him. Ok, LITERALLY there was a 30 second gap between him walking out and me following.
I got outside and he was NOWHERE. Not walking on the sidewalk, not across the street. I went to the parking lot and there was nobody in ANY of the cars and the lot was full so it wasn't like he had just pulled out. He was completely GONE within 30 seconds. I checked my pocket for the number and the 20 and they were still there.
The next day we called the number from a payphone. It was the number to a local clothing store and they had never heard of a Michael Grey.
Second Incident: Fast forward a bit from being homeless and my SO and I had an apartment and jobs at a local grocery store. This store was about 5 miles away and we didn't have a car so we always walked to work. Even in the winter.
One day it was about 35 degrees as I'd walked to work, sun was shining, wasn't a bad walk at all. But my shift ended at 10:30pm and by then it had gotten to -11 degrees and the wind was blowing like crazy.
I was wearing my winter coat over my work uniform which were pretty much skin tight black slacks and a cotton T-shirt. I started walking and about a mile down the road I was in SERIOUS pain. My legs ached so bad from the cold to the point that I was almost in tears.
In my head I was pissed off. Pissed off that I didn't have a car, pissed off that nobody from work was able to give me a ride, pissed off that my work pants were so GOD DAMN THIN. I was actually saying this sentence in my head...
"You know what, God? You'd think to prove your existence you'd show me some humanity. Like have one of your God-fearing followers pull up and offer me a..." and at that moment a car pulled over in front of me.
The guy driving rolled down his window and said it was too cold to be walking and he'd be happy to drive me to town if that's where I was headed. I thanked him a million times while getting into his car and once I buckled the seat belt I noticed a crucifix hanging from his rear view mirror... Ha!
Third Incident: Fast forward a bit more and my SO had started hitting me. (Not for no reason, I was a total cunt A LOT of the time at that point.) AND there was this major issue with a love triangle we had going on.
At a certain point I left the apartment and stayed with one of his friends who just HAPPENED to be the son of a pastor. He and I would stay up late and talk about problems with life and he would always circle back to God. It was a bit annoying at first, but after a while it was kind of admirable that what he believed in gave him so much comfort.
One day while he was at work I was paging through his bible. Came across this story about a love triangle. I don't remember where it was or how it went, all I remember is one of the women's names in it was something like 'Oholiba' or something strange like that.
After reading it I really wanted to discuss it with the pastors son but for some stupid reason I didn't bookmark the page.
He came back from work and I started explain it to him and he looked at me like I was crazy cause he'd never heard of a story like that in the bible. So I grab his bible, open it up, and start desperately searching for it... But couldn't find it.
For three days I would randomly grab his bible, often in front of him, and look for it. He would just laugh and say I imagined it.
On the fourth day, we were sitting on his couch bored out of our minds and I grabbed his bible off the coffee table. He started to laugh and I just said really loud, "GOD, IF YOU WANT ME TO BELIEVE YOU ARE REAL YOU WILL HELP ME FIND THIS FUCKING STORY!!!" Opened the book and BAM, I had opened right to the first page of the story.
Even the pastors son was shocked. Of course he said, "What more proof do you need?" and I just shook it off as a complete fluke.
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So yeah. Weird God stuff. But hey, science is science. I'm still an atheist.