Musings from the Side of the Road

Breaking down in one's vehicle is more fun when you have a fully charged laptop with you, and it is also fun to have a cell phone. In that regard, I considered myself quite fortunate...I remember not too many years ago, having all five kids with me (including a newborn baby) and breaking down by the side of the highway, no cell phone (it was after that incident that we got them!), and no one stopped for over 4 hours to help us. At least now I can write a live action blog post and publish it when I get home.

It is an interesting study into human behavior when you are broke down by the side of the road. Most people just race past you. Some get angry if you were so rude as to have your car stop moving while hanging slightly into traffic (even with your hazards on, flares out, and so forth), and beep, honk, and make hand gestures. Because I'm a lady I can't just stop and help a stranger (too dangerous)when I see someone broke down by the side of the road, but I do at least call the police to send them some help, or AAA if they have the sticker in their window.

My van was finally "fixed" (in quotes) on Saturday, when my hubby and my mom's dh drained the trans fluid, and then replaced filters, and such, hoping that would solve the issues inexpensively. And, voila, it ran better than it had in months, so "mission accomplished' or so we thought. Martin thought I should drive it a bit, and so off I went today, since the no one told me we were out of dog food and garbage bags when I went grocery shopping (in our house, when you use the last or next to last of something, you have to write it on the chalkboard, but it doesn't always work that way), and we had some overdue library books that we thought were due this week but apparently were due last week.

Everything was going along swimmingly until Old Bessie here decided to shift from 60 down to 50, and from there, progressively shift down in 10MPH increments until she eventually refused to move. Thankfully I was able to pull over (mostly). In the past when the trans has acted up, putting it into reverse, and then back into drive helped, and so I tried that... the van ran perfectly in reverse. LOL which as you may imagine was not helpful to me. I am so bad at backing into driveways that I didn't get my drivers license on time as my dad made me back into the driveway, and all the way into the garage in our conversion van...and I took out large pieces of the garage on several occasions. With ditches next to the road, I was a little nervous, but I eventually backed up and into a business driveway several yards away.

I thanked God for my cell phone, and started to call. My dh is sick on the couch with the flu, so he was the last person I planned to call...but as it turned out, all of my people in my phone were not home or their phones were busy, so I wound up calling Dh anyway...He called a friend of his who was to meet us. The only other person I got ahold of was my friend Angela in Virginia. Her husband was all willing to come get me and help me out until he found out I was about 14 hours away in another state, but it was a nice thought :-)

Hubby got there first, and when I told him she only drives in reverse, he told me to back it up, across 5 lanes of highway, into the gas station across the street. I will admit to not cheerfully submitting to that request, but instead doing a sort of blank stare with a ~blink, blink, blink~ at him trying to figure out if he was kidding. (he wasn't). Instead, I drove the go cart (our name for dh's Saturn, which feels like a GC in comparison to the van), close behind him as he maneuvered the van across the road, and prayed the whole way for angels to protect us (they did). People really were honking then, but thankfully there wasn't as much traffic.

Martin and his friend towed it all the way home, and I finished the shopping trip in the Go Cart.

Now we are going to have to make some decisions about what to do with the van. J. keeps saying that it is in perfect shape apart from the trans issue, and that we should fix it even with all of those miles on it.

I was thinking as I sat here in this van, how God so miraculously provided so much for us...HE gave us THIS VAN just 3 Christmases ago...we prayed for it, and tried our best to save to a vehicle, but even though it looked impossible, we got this van as literally a Christmas present from Heaven....the laptop--God GAVE me that laptop under totally miraculous circumstances (it didn't drop from heaven; it came UPS but it still was totally God)....and so much more. I have no doubt He will provide a way.

Well, after we got home and had dinner...I read from a George Mueller biography to build my faith, and this time read it outloud to the whole family...someone called to tell us they found us a transmission for $100 and someone to put it in for under $200...which was really amazing since the quote we got back in October was more like $2000!!!...Of course right now that $300 might as well be $3K because we have no money...but wouldn't you know it, a web design job has come up that will be paying right around that.

The same God George Mueller served, is the one we still serve today.