Stuff happens....

So last time I mentioned a breakdown on the freeway a couple of weeks ago... I've already told this story to almost everyone I know, but I'll put it here too for posterity. :) I am constantly amazed at the Lord's "tender mercies" to me and my family. He answers prayers and He watches over us. This does not mean that we are free from trials -- they're gonna happen. But He makes them easier sometimes, as you'll see from this account. Sorry it's long -- I tried to shorten it but there's really no way to do that....

Brittany, Taryn, Taryn's friend Summer, and I, drove in Brittany's "new" car (okay, it's a 1999 Kia Sportage which has 112,000 miles on it, but it's new to her!) to Phoenix because they were going with my sisters Kim and Valerie to see John Mayer in concert that night. They wanted to drive the Kia to the concert, so after we got there I drove Kim's pickup to Gilbert (about 15 min. away) to visit my cousin Arlene. After the concert, we needed to switch cars again, so I drove the pickup to Chandler and brought the Kia back to Arlene's. (I wanted to spend the night there in a soft bed, the girls wanted to sleep on Kim's floor. Oh to be young again...)

The following morning, I left Gilbert at about 10:30 to pick up the girls. I was driving the Kia, westward on the 202-Loop, and suddenly heard a terrible thumping screeching banging noise, and the car died. I managed to get it onto the shoulder, and it stopped right under an overpass. Blessing #1: Shade. I got out to see what was up, and the right front tire had blown a long strip of tread off, which had flapped around and torn up the wheel well guard thing and ripped out a bunch of wires from under the hood.


Blessing #2: My brother Dave lives nearby, and was home and not out working that day. He got me a tow truck and we ended up at his house, where he spent a few hours in the hot Phoenix sun repairing and replacing the broken wires, poor guy! While he was working on it, his wife Cindy went and got the girls in Chandler who were starving by this time (Kim had gone to work), and we ordered pizza and had lunch in their nice air conditioned house, and watched TV and played with baby Aydn (Blessing #4).

Blessing #5: Dave is a genius, and was able to fix the wires, replace the ignition fuse which had blown, get the car started, and we made it to Discount Tire two minutes before they closed.

Blessing #6: Arlene called right about then and asked if we were still in town and if we wanted to go have dinner with them. We gratefully accepted (all of us) and had a yummy dinner and a fun family visit there. Although we had planned to drive home that evening, I didn't want to push our luck any further, so we just stayed the night there and drove home the next morning, getting here just an hour before Madison's birthday party was to start.

There were so many others of those "tender mercies" that I didn't even mention... like the tire incident didn't happen to the girls on the way to or from the concert in Phoenix... it didn't happen to me at 1:00 am when I was driving it alone back to Arlene's the night before... now it's fixed and it won't happen to Brittany sometime when she's driving by herself... and probably a lot of other things I didn't even think or know about.

Challenges will come. But I believe we always get help when we ask for it, and things always work out. I'm so grateful for prayer -- it works.

Thanks for reading.