Have you ever had one of those times when it seems like everything is falling apart around you? I don’t mean terrible life threatening things, just a lot of annoying little things all at once. For example, our dryer is not working properly. It is making a terrible clunking sound,which I have deduced is a bad drum roller. (Thank you youtube!) This is a simple enough fix, however you have to run it three or four times to actually dry the clothes. I don’t know about you, but this is super annoying and our electric bill was a tiny bit outrageous last month. Add to this the fact that I can easily wash 3 or 4 loads of laundry a day and you have annoyance numero uno. We have been making bi-weekly trips to the laundromat and drying 10 loads of laundry at a time. Laundry in a house with 10 people can be overwhelming when you stay on top of it, so this has been super fun. (Note the sarcasm.)
We are really blessed to have four bathrooms in our home. This is huge since we only really had one working bathroom and one creepy, spidery half-bathroom that only sometimes worked, in the basement of our old house. Nothing annoying about four bathrooms, right? Well, not normally, but when the toilets in both of the main bathrooms won’t flush, yes that is annoying! Especially when you have little ones that do whatever in the toilet and then it just sits there for who knows how long. Super Yuck!!!Annoyance number 2.
Last Monday, Brian kissed me goodbye and left to go to work. I was surprised to see him come back in a few minutes later. “My car won’t start!” (Annoyance number 3!) He took the other car which was fine, except that it meant that Coley and Jake were going to need a ride to school too. No big deal. We can definitely manage with 2 cars. But then things started to get really interesting. On Tuesday, Jake drove Brian to work early so that he would have the car. Coley and Jake both have an 8 am class and didn’t want to chance being late by riding with the other kids and me. We left the house around 7:30. I watched Coley and Jake pull away as the other kids piled into the van. I put the key in the ignition and turned it and nothing. I mean absolutely NOTHING. Not a light, not a ding, not a thing. In all honesty, the van had been acting a little bit weird for a few weeks. Twice I could feel it power down and all of the lights on the dashboard flashed and the needles were twitching. But then it was perfectly fine. I was hoping that it had just been a fluke, but now it wouldn’t even turn on. So I called my husband to come and rescue us. Thankfully we only live a few minutes from work. He came home and took the first load of kids to school and I stayed behind with the two littlest. By the time he came back and picked us up, Aiden and Jonathan were late getting to school, so I had to go in and sign them in. And then we were off to work again. This now brought our working car count from three down to one, that is one 2 door, 5 passenger car to haul 10 people around in. Annoyance number 4!
Thankfully I was able to finangle some rides (Thank you Lisa Perron!) and get everyone to and from school for the next couple of days. But it was not without some, ok a lot of, stress.
And that is when we catch a glimpse at God’s sense of humor. After one thing after another seemed to be falling apart around us, Brian and I were laying in bed stressing about how we were going to have both cars and the dryer and the toilets fixed. We held hands and said a prayer asking that God take control and take care of us, as He always does. We said amen and I sighed. “What else could possibly break ?” I said under my breath. All of a sudden my entire side of the bed collapsed. I just started to laugh, because at this point, it was laugh or cry. I couldn’t even deal with it. I just grabbed on to Brian and tried not to fall out of bed all night.( Imagine the titanic going down. I was on the under-water side. )
After a somewhat decent night’s sleep, we woke the next morning, fully surrendered to God’s plan. We had no choice but to trust that He would work things out, not just because we were not in a financial situation where we had a ton of extra cash just lying around to take care of everything, but also because we had, in faith, given it over to God. Brian said that he felt that we should have the van fixed. I was a little bit hesitant because I was fairly certain that it was the alternator and possibly the serpentine belt, that had gone bad in the van. This could easily be over $500 to fix. But we had asked for guidance and this is what Brian felt that we should do, so I agreed. I called a local mechanic and explained the situation. He said that he would send a tow truck. The tow truck driver called to tell me that he was coming and I went out to meet him. He was more than a little bit gruff and asked me if the van would move at all. I shook my head no and explained what had happened when I had tried to turn it on. I told him that it had been completely dead. I handed him the keys so that he could see for himself. He turned the key and the van started right up! My mouth hit the ground. I was as shocked as he was amused. He popped the hood to check things out. Apparently the alternator was fine and the belt was “good to go,” the battery however, was a “piece of s@#t.” He then asked me for a cup of warm water and three TBSP of baking soda and proceeded to clean off the connector things on the battery. He also told me where to get the best battery for the best price.( Rural King, if you were wondering.) He was so helpful and, despite his slightly scary appearance, so kind. I just chuckled to myself as I paid the $45 bill for his services, rather than the $500 it could have been. Once again He came through. And, in case you were wondering, sometimes angels drive tow trucks.
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