This article has been sitting in my head waiting to be written for the past four months. Most people know that I'm a born-again Christian and that I believe that all things happen for a reason. We may not understand why things happen, especially tragic situations, but I believe that all things happen for, an eventual, greater good.

This story came about because our detached garage had been burglarized back in February. The thieves took a subwoofer box out of my wife's car, a GPS unit and bluetooth speaker from my car, and a center channel speaker from the garage, but what really made me sad was that they took my skateboard and skate bag from the trunk of my car.

I work from home, so if I don't have any errands to run, I may not go out of the house at all. When my neighbor came knocking at my door, in the afternoon, telling me that my garage was open and it had been open since that morning, I grabbed my garage opener and went to shut it. The garage has been left open a couple times before without incident, but this time we weren't so lucky. When I went out to take a look, I knew right away when I saw my wife's car hatch was open, stuff was going to be missing. I took a quick look to see what else was missing and, much to my chagrin, I looked in the back of my trunk to see all my skate gear gone. A feeling of disbelief came over me. This was a feeling I had not felt since Sacramento in 1999, when I came home to find my Technics 1200s and mixer had gone missing. Unlike this story, I ended up getting those back thanks to a very observant apartment manager, but that's another story. Anyway, thoughts raced through my mind about all of the stuff that was in my bag. Among them, a two-week old pair of Osiris shoes, 187 knee pads, elbow pads, S-One helmet, a whole bunch of salonpas, first-aid kit, a brand new pair of knee gaskets, I never got to wear and a lot of other things that most skaters don't carry around. And lastly, my House of Kasai deck with indy trucks, rocket bearings and SoCal Skateshop wheels.

Now if I was someone who wasn't blessed to get all of my skate gear for free, I would have been really bummed, pissed actually. But since I know that things happen for a reason, there is no need to fret over lost possessions.

This all happened on a Wednesday, which is a night I look forward to, because I get to hang out with a group of guys that I have been skating with for the past couple years at the Vans skatepark. I put in a call to Lonny Hiramoto about 5pm telling him that I would not be skating because all my gear was stolen the night before. Lonny replied, "What do you need?" I chuckled and said, "I have a new set of wheels, but I need everything else." Lonny ended the conversation by saying, "Just meet me down there and we'll get you set up."

Three hours later, we were down at the park and Lonny hands me an old deck with a set of indys and old bearings that he wasn't using anymore, a set of 187 elbows, and a set of rental knee pads from Vans. Lonny told me that he called Christian Hosoi to bring me some bearings too. I set up Lonny's old deck and suited up and took some runs while we waited for Christian. Later, I spotted Christian at the fence and he called me over. He said that I could use his old pads until I got new ones. And he threw over the fence a custom made set of 187 from Vinton with the rising sun stitched into the sides. Sweet! I couldn't believe that I was going to be wearing a set of knee pads that the Christian Hosoi had worn. Not only that, but when Christian got into the park, he handed me a brand new set of Ninja Hosoi bearings. Needless to say, we had an awesome session that night and I drove home that night thanking God that He had surrounded me with such great friends.

A few days later, I got a package from Mike Hirsch on my doorstep. In it, a new set of indys, a couple indy tees and some of those cool black indy socks, that are actually very comfy socks to skate in. Following that, a box full of Salonpas from Roger Kaneko over at Hisamitsu. My good friend, Rob, got me onto the Lexani shoe team, and House of Kasai sponsors me, so I hit up Lester for a new deck and he also got me a new helmet from his kind sponsor, S-One. A couple weeks after that, I got a spanking new set of 187 kneepads from Vinton Pacetti. And just like that I was all set up again.

God's favor is an awesome thing. Sometimes we tend to look at situations we go through just for what happened and not what could have happened. Yeah, we got stuff stolen from us, but thankfully, they weren't taken by force. We don't have a lot of extra money to buy a new GPS, but thankfully, they didn't steal or vandalize our cars, just for the fun of it.

I'm sitting here writing this with a knee injury I received the other night at Vans. I was learning backside lipslides and I bailed, jumping backwards to the tranny and hyper-extending my knee straight backwards. I felt it pop, and I thought I was done for at least two months. I rolled off the mini ramp sitting on my board and limped over to the combi bleachers. Lonny laid hands on me and prayed over it, and I received God's healing. As I sit here nursing it back to 100%, I know that God showed me favor and didn't let my knee totally come apart. I'm turning 40 this year and for a lot of people my age, this hyper-extension would have been much more severe. He showed me favor, because I was barely limping only after two days. And even though I was supposed to go to Woodward this weekend for the first time, I can't question why God let this happen, I can only be thankful of His grace.

God shows me favor by giving me free gear because of the abilities He's granted to me. His favor is all around us, we just have to be willing to open up and see it.