Counting blessings and a stakeout.

Our vehicle died this morning on the way to church. It's kind of a long story. See if you can recognize all the blessings we experienced today.

In January I noticed that the tires on our van were shot. The steel belts were showing! We didn't have an extra $300 laying around to buy new tires. We weren't willing to go into debt to purchase them either, so I started driving my teenagers' old Suburban. No big deal. I'm not too good to drive an old beater.

Now it's March. No new tires yet. (next week for sure!) The Suburban has not been running right for about a week. Sometimes the engine just quits while driving down the street. No problem...I throw it in neutral and it starts back up again. Not this morning.

It died on a busy street on our way to church today. Right in front of a friend's house! Still, we had to try to push it off the road into their driveway. Did I mention that dad is out of town? As cars went whizzing past, I couldn't help but think that 90% of them were headed to church.

I put two teenagers pushing in the back, one teen on the passenger side and me on the driver's side. With no power steering I was able to push and muscle the wheel enough to turn into the drive...and hop in and step on the brake in time to keep from rolling back over my sweet babies pushing from behind.

Did I mention that the new baby is due tomorrow? I was wondering at the time if pushing a truck would be enough to send me into labor!! I guess not.

A nice man stopped to see if we needed any help. He was wearing shorts and a ball cap...certainly not dressed for even the most casual church. Using a chain he was able to pull us completely off of the road and offered to let me use his phone. I declined and thanked him sincerely. He was heaven sent, I'm sure.

We walked less than a mile to get home. The weather was beautiful. Wesley took Ralphie and walked ahead of the rest of us as there was a grass fire nearby and we didn't want him breathing any smoky air. The rest of us had a leisurely walk past the field with all the horses and the home with the dog agility course, AKA the "doggy playground" to our house.

While the kids changed into their playclothes I noticed that I had a phone message from an angel (who shall remain anonymous) only a few minutes earlier. I called back and reluctantly related our morning adventure. Turns out...get this...that someone was on their way to our house to drop off a car for us.

This angel was gifting an unused vehicle to a loved one. In turn, the loved one was asked to gift their vehicle to us. A God-thing? I think so. I knew about this a couple of days ago, but was unsure when or if it would really happen.

(We experienced static electricity with Ralph soon after this phone call.)

Have you heard that God is never late? Never early? Thomas was pretty upset that we didn't make it to church today. I think there was something special going on in Sunday school. But, we had an opportunity to experience God's blessings in a totally different way today. We had an opportunity to think about what we would do if we came upon a stranded family on our way to church. What's more important...walking the walk? Or talking the talk?

I'll end this on a funny note. Two of my teens had a weekend job passing out flyers for the upcoming city council elections. The job HAD to be done today. The flyers HAD to go to all the neighborhoods in the city limits. They saved the outlying areas for today, which would have been impossible without transportation.

On our way home this evening, I noticed a cloud of smoke or dust rising from behind our neighbor's house. As we drove by, Thomas said he thought they were having a stakeout. Huh?

I said to him, "Do you mean they are cooking steaks out on the grill?"

"Yeah, a stakeout", he said.

What a fun day!