When I lived in the States one of my worst fears was having car troubles. I would take my car in for all of its check up and pour whatever money needed into it to avoid these awful, frustrating, time consuming, inconvenient occurrences. Since I’ve moved to Mexico it seems that dealing with car troubles is part of my job, could even very reasonably fit into my job description... I have had at least five occurences where the I am out somewhere and the car I am driving will not start at all...
Today I was in the United States in Chula Vista, about 25 minutes from the border, picking up a food donation. When I went to start the car again to leave it wouldn’t start. I tried fiddling with the battery connection which usually helps but that did nothing. Then a couple of the men who were there helped to grind down and tighten the connections. After a couple of attempts we found this wasn’t helping. We then tried to jump the car which was another failed attempt. Throughout all of this I was calm, a bit annoyed at the inconvenience but very cool and collected, knowing there were far worse things that could happen. I eventually talked to Sara and we found someone to come pick me up and we’d leave the van in the US. Just after I’d given directions to the guy who was coming to get me and though, ‘Why not give it one more try’ and sure enough it turned over and started up perfectly! Just then one of the men who’d been helping me to no avail came over and asked me what I did to fix it. I turned to him and very matter-of-factly responded, “I prayed. That’s the only explanation.” Throughout the whole thing I’d been praying, not knowing what was wrong but knowing God was big enough to fix it. Not getting frustrated but remaining thankful that I was safe in the US with caring people when this happened... thanking God and asking if it was his will if he could just let it start so I could get home.
Prayer has truly become my response to problems here. I run into frustrations and problems and issues that back in the US would have ruined my day but now I just turn to God, asking for his help and more often than not he comes through. This was never my response to problems before... but I’ve learned that along with teaching me patience God is using this time to show me that if I just turn to him he can make it all better, if I just believe. And my response to the man who asked me what I did, well in the past I would have considered this to be a crazy answer, of course something physically must have happened... fortunately God has showed me over the past 5 months that that is not always the case... sometimes he just fixes things himself!
No comments:
Post a Comment