No, loved ones. This time it is very literal. Sometimes my posts will be commentaries on a hot topic and sometimes they will be like this one, a personal story.
A few weeks ago, I noticed a pull on the front tires of my van. It was slight so I dismissed it. A few weeks later, I started feeling the notorious vibration that my wheels were out of alignment. The faster I drove, the more it would shake.
As you may know, I am a stay-at-home mom for with my two precious boys. It is a wonderful job, but my husband and I make some sacrifices, specifically financial sacrifices for me to be able to do this.
So when the vibrating got pretty rough a couple of weeks ago, we decided to wait it out until we got paid at the beginning of the month. There was nothing dangerous, as best as we could tell, by looking at our tires. So I prayed as I drove.
I would really pray when I traveled two times a week on the interstate to go to Bible Study Fellowship. It was about a 15-minute drive on the highway. The boys were always with me when I would go. So I would pray for safety and protection.
Today, I went to my very last Bible Study Fellowship for the year and my boys weren't with me this time. So on my trip there and back I was in prayer for my safety and praying gratitude for God's protection on my traveling thus far. There was a moment when I thought of what could have happened if something bad had happened ... and I pushed the thought out of my head as quickly as it came in.
After I returned from the study, I fed my boys lunch, took my oldest to school and took the youngest to my parents house. They were going to watch him while I took my sister in law to lunch as a thank you for watching my boys while I went to my last study.
She and I had a nice relaxing lunch and headed to pick up my youngest son from my parents. When we pulled into their driveway and got out of the car, we both immediately noticed a loud hissing. When we investigated, we watched my front right tire flatten in about 60 seconds flat.
That was the first time I had noticed a little bit of the steel belt showing through on the outside of the tire. It wasn't enough to cause a flat, so I figured I must have run over something right before I got to my parent's house since the tire flattened so quickly and in their drive way.
After figuring out what to do, I called my roadside assistance to come and change my tire. It is a wonderful service my mom got for me that is a lot like AAA. The service person arrived more than 30 minutes before their promised arrival time and quickly change my flat and put on the spare donut. I knew even before seeing the tire off, I would need a new one.
As the man pulled my tire off the rim, I saw the real reason for the flat. A large 2-inch-wide by 6-inch-long gap lay where the treading had been on the INSIDE of my tire. It lay open and had apparently ruptured as I turned into my parent's drive way.
Now you might be thinking this is a coincidence or luck. Luck that the tire didn't flatten in an inconvenient place, like a parking lot or driving my son to school. Luck that I wasn't in a rush to go somewhere. Luck that I didn't have a major blowout on the highway and have a devastating crash.
My sweet daddy kept repeating this phrase over and over to me. "Michelle, you are so lucky. I can't believe how lucky you are you didn't have a blow out." He was obviously shaken to have seen what a close call this had turned out to be. He was so thankful for our safety, he even bought not just one but three new tires and had them aligned. He said it was much better than seeing me or my family in the hospital ... or worse.
But I know that there is no such thing as luck. What happened to me today was God's answer to my prayers for protection and beyond that it was His provision. It was an answer to prayer for my safety as I traveled.
And not only did God provide safety, He even allowed me to attend my last Bible Study, run my kids where they needed to go, let me have lunch with my sister in law AND guided me safely into my parent's drive way before that tire finally was exhausted. He also knew I didn't have anything important to do this afternoon and had already arranged for my wonderful friend Angela to pick up my son from school. He covered everything.
And when I learned how much it would cost to replace the tires (two of the other tires were miles away from the same fate) I was really upset. Although we do have an emergency fund for situations like this, it was going to put a major dent in it. It was going to be a lot of money.
So God used my parents to provide for me. They so generously replaced my tires even if for their peace of mind and my safety.
God is so amazing. He knows everything that will happen before it does. He makes a plan for us to be safe and to provide for us. And on this day, he proved to me again that He is very real and very involved in every last little detail of my life.
God promises us His protection: Psalm 5:11-12 says, "But let all who take refuge in you rejoice; let them ever sing for joy, and spread your protection over them, that those who love your name may exult in you. For you bless the righteous, O LORD; you cover him with favor as with a shield."
God, my refuge and my shield protected and provided for me today in unexpected and amazing ways. I am have no words for my gratitude and am sad to say amazed at what He can do for me.
To God be the glory for the things He has done, is doing and will do.
1 comment:
to recap: if you pray a lot, god will save you a few hundred dollars on auto repairs.
if you don't pray while you're in class, you may get a bullet in the head.
i do wonder what that means for people who DONT have financial support. does that mean they didn't pray enough? sounds like oprah's "secret" not god.
now, i can easily conceive of a god that has reasons (assuming a bit of a rational god) for allowing those things to happen, even if he is involved in day-to-day affairs. god could see a much bigger plan.
but if that's the case, then why assume that his universal concerns are the same as your daily inconveniences? it sounds more like coincidence that you want to attribute to the big guy because it's a good coincidence. but if it were a bad one, you'd just say it was random.
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