Friday, July 28, 2006

I Should Have Known

The mechanics were able to look at the car and they even fixed it and gave it back to me Monday afternoon. Even better, it was only a $250 fix (believe me, we've seen worse!) The water pump needed replaced and the vacuum seal on the transmission was broken. So they fixed it and I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Rob wouldn't be home til Wednesday so I thought I was going to have to spend several days without my husband and without a car!

I drove up to visit some friends just North of Salem on Tuesday night (silly me) and just as I was about to turn onto the street Bill and Krista live on my car wouldn't let me turn. I wrenched on the steering wheel with all of my might and it finally turned and I was able to make it to the front of their house. I tried to ignore the steam seeping from my engine.

What's a girl to do? I called my daddy. He told me to lift the hood and see if there was a belt that had come loose. Sure enough, that's what it was. We let the car cool down for a while then Bill and I put my daddy on speaker phone and he talked us through putting the belt back on. It was comical. Hilarious I'm sure! We did it though and I started up the car and drove it around the block and it seemed fine. My daddy said that they probably didn't tighten it after they replaced the pump. He encouraged me to take it straight to the shop because whatever caused it to come off in the first place was probably still going to be a problem.

Bill and Krista encouraged me just to take their car home, and I'm glad they did. We wrestled the kids car seats into their car and I headed back down I-5. We made it home just fine, but that's because the evil Buick was still in Keizer.

So, on Thursday Rob headed up to Keizer to return their car and retrieve ours. Maybe I should have asked if they wanted to trade?!?!? Rob noticed it over heating again so he stopped to put some water in it in Salem. He made it down I-5 and back to Albany, but then it died on him on the side of the road. He had the evil beast towed back to the mechanic and there it sits. I imagine they didn't get to look at it today because I haven't heard from them yet. So this weekend we go everywhere together!

Here's the thing, I should have known this would happen. A $250 fix didn't hurt bad enough. You know why? Because we had more than $250 saved (we're saving to buy a scooter for Rob to ride instead of the evil beast during the summer. At 80-90 miles to the gallon it would pay for itself in a year.)

God is faithful. He's faithful to do two things.

1.) He's faithful to provide for us above and beyond what we could ever imagine. I could tell you story after story of how He's used people and circumstances to provide beyond our wildest dreams.

2.) When we have any money saved He's faithful to make something break (cars namely, but some household items), to inflict something on one of us (usually me, pregnancy being one of them) that requires a lot of money, or we have to pay for an adoption etc. I was happy to pay for the birth and the adoption, but paying to get cars fixed seems so pointless. It seems like your just flushing money down the toilet, or into the water-pump :0)

Oh well, God has never put us in a position where He hasn't provided for us. I think He just wants us to depend on His faithfulness. It's a good place to be!

1 comment:

Krista said...

Oh, now I'm really glad you took our car! And I think we'll be hanging on to it. :) Hope things are going better with the buick.