A couple of years ago I started having some issues with my cell phone provider. Pretty much immediately after they got insistent about having to have 2 factor authentication turned on. I would go into the app or onto the website to check on something and I wouldn’t be able to get logged in because their system was insistent that I need to use the two factor identification which entailed them ‘sending’ a text message to me (in theory anyway.) and me giving them the identification code. Only I wasn’t getting the text messages.
At first I tried to figure out thing on my end. I turned my phone off and back on again. I deleted the app and redownloaded it. I tried re logging in. I tried logging in from a different device. Nothing worked.
Then I tried calling the company to find out why I was having issues. I tried everything that they suggested to to and figure out why I wasn’t getting messages. Nada.I got transferred I don’t know how many times in an effort to find someone, anyone who help me figure out why I wasn’t getting messages, without results.
I went to the store and explained the problem there. I explained that I still wasn’t getting my messages; at least not the important ones. I got all of the ones where they try and sell you stuff. Just not the important ones with things like the 2 factor authentication codes. They looked over the phone, tried a few things and they couldn’t figure out what the problem was either.
Over this time period I called the company several times, only to be told over and over, we can’t find the problem. We don’t know why your phone is doing this. I did some research of my own trying to backtrack the problem. No matter what possible solutions I found, none of them fixed the problem.
Then a couple of months ago, I had been trying ‘one more time’ to figure what I couldn’t receive the elusive text messages. I decided to pop the scenario into Google Gemini to see what it could come up with and if it would come up with anything that I had not already tried.
One of the first things on Gemini’s list of questions was, ‘Is the phone number blocked?’ I was like, ‘What?!’ Not once, in all the phone calls, the visits, the research, had anyone once suggested that the problem could involve the actual number being somehow blocked. I didn’t even know what the number was that they sent the message from. Thankfully, the Gemini had an answer for that too so that I would be able to look at blocked numbers on my phone and identify if the number was in the list. I pulled up the list of blocked numbers and sure enough, there is was, right there in the list of blocked numbers. I removed it from the blocked numbers list and tried to log in again and voila, the notification message came right through. All that time and effort. All of those calls to the phone company, the PHONE company mind you, and they didn’t think to have me double check blocked numbers to exclude it from the list of potential causes. I’m still shaking my head over this one, let me tell you.
What really caught me though about the whole thing is how a problem can be so simple and yet we cannot even see the answer that is right in front of our faces. So basic and yet somehow escapes our notice. It amazes me how many times in life I encounter a moment like this. A moment when something that I have been struggling with for so long, in an instant, just comes completely into focus. When a situation that has left me just about losing my mind not being able to figure it out and then one little nudge and bam, the answer is just right there in front of me. It makes me think about how God sometimes allows us to stumble around. We run around and try to figure things out but we just can’t seem to see the forest for the trees. We get frustrated and overwhelmed. We spend time looking for the answers in all kinds of places, except the one place that has the answers we need. Then, after we’ve tried everything else, it finally dawns on us that we could just ask for help from God. The One who has all the answers we could ever need. So, we go to Him and ask the question that has been plaguing us and He answers and we realize that the answer was right there in front of us the entire time. We just couldn’t see it. We just needed that connection with the One who knew every little detail.
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