Addie is madly in love with horses. She especially likes to see the "horsies in the sand" at a riding school we discovered on Michigan in between Grand River Drive and Crahen. She asks to see them every day after we drop Ellie off at school and again after we pick her up. Most days I comply, because I like the drive up the hill on Michigan, and, let's be honest, there's just something about horses. Today I told her we had to hurry home from picking Ellie up so we could wrap Beau's birthday presents and the girls could make cards for him.
So there we were, on the highway. We took the Fulton entrance onto I-96, like we normally do. I was grumpy, because the cars in front of me were not accelerating on the entrance ramp. They were holding us back. We managed to get on the highway (at about 55 MPH), and I merged into traffic, quickly getting my speed up to 70 MPH.
Just west of the East Beltline overpass, I noticed something flying through the air a few car lengths ahead of us. It looked like a rod or something, but my brain struggled to process what I was seeing. All I could think was there was nowhere for me to go but forward. At 70 MPH it doesn't take long to traverse a few hundred yards, so it didn't take long before it became clear that there was going to be an impact between my van full of precious girls and this object. I had enough time to slow down and pray that it wouldn't come through the windshield just as it seemed to land on the road in front of us. With no other option, because I knew swerving would be the worst thing I could do at that speed, I drove over it. The thunk it made startled the girls and was quickly erased by the ding of my check engine light.
Deciding I should head straight to the car shop--it was 4:00 on a Friday, after all--I drove to our normal car repair store where they were able to get our car right in to assess the damage. After about an hour, we learned that the damage was close to $2,000. I'll end up getting a new bumper, air conditioning compressor, ambient air sensor, and maybe even a new radiator! Exciting times. We have insurance to pay for the damage after we pay our deductible. The money for that is in the bank, and it may even end up being only a comprehensive claim, which will save us $800. Jehovah Jireh. God provides.
But, as I reflect on it, none of that is the point.
The point is that there are things we know nothing about. If I had it to do over, obviously we would go see the horsies in the sand today. But I didn't know anything about what was on the highway, so I made the choice based on the 20 minutes it would save us to avoid that extra stop. I also didn't know anything about the rod of metal flipping through the air on the highway. If I had, maybe I'd have been grateful that the car in front of us didn't accelerate fast enough and held us back. Maybe if it hadn't, we would have been a bit further down the highway where our windshield would have met a metal rod at 70 MPH.
How many times in my day, in my week, am I in the middle of things I know nothing about? How often has God had me be just far enough to the right or just fast enough or just late enough that I missed a disaster? When my dad was in Iraq, there was story after story about him or others he worked with being in just the right place or leaving where they were just in time or "randomly" not being where they always were at that time--those stories meant the difference between their lives and their deaths.
It's no different for any of us. So thank you, God, for having me and my precious daughters in the palm of your hand. Thank you for having Beau there, too. And for having such care for all of us that nothing can happen to us without it first passing through Your hands.
What is your only comfort in life and in death?
That I am not my own, but I belong, in body and in soul, in life and in death, to my faithful savior Jesus Christ.
He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven: in fact, all things must work together for my salvation.
Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.
Heidelberg Catechism, Q & A 1
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