It’s been one of those months for Chad and I where you have
to make the decision, “Do I pay tithes, or do I pay the bills?” I know many of
you know what I am talking about, in many of you may not, but you might one
day. As I was leaving to go shopping, I got a text from a friend who is going
through a similar financial situation and she basically said, we paid tithes
knowing we would have no grocery money and someone brought us food. God is
going to take care of us. After reading that it was an encouraging boost, we
just spent $440 on car repairs the day before and the first of the month is
literally when almost every bill is due. I knew that if we paid tithes this
week that we wouldn’t have the money to pay one of our bills and I would have
to pull from our savings account. This was all going through my head as I am
driving into town, but Chad and I made the decision that no matter what we
would pay tithes first. Even if that means we won’t have money for groceries,
gas, or anything else we would pay tithes first. I am talking to myself while
driving, reminding myself that I don’t have to worry because God’s going to
take care of us.

Next thing you know I am sitting at a stoplight and a little
warning light appears on my dashboard. I have absolutely no idea about anything
when it comes to cars, this wasn’t my gas light, it wasn’t my oil light, it
wasn’t my engine light, I had no idea what it meant. All I knew is we had just
got our car fixed less than 24 hours ago and it should not be doing this. Next
thing you know my air conditioning starts blowing out hot air, so I turn it off
and pull into the Wal-Mart parking lot next to a tree hoping to find some
share. By this time I am literally drenched in sweat, it was the hottest part
of the day and yesterday was definitely hot. I just kind of sit there because I
don’t know what to do. I thought I should try to get a picture of the little
warning light and send it to Chad, so I turn the car back on and it’s gone.
Maybe it was just random? So I decided to drive across the street to Chick-Fil-A
and if it turned back on before I made it there, I would snap a picture and
call Chad in the air conditioning of Chick-Fil-A.

 I am sitting at the
stoplight outside of Wal-Mart to cross a four lane highway into the parking lot
of Chick-Fil-A, and next thing you know the light turns on again. This time I
get a little worried, so the light turns green and I cross the highway and
literally in that small amount a time my engine temperature goes from normal to
as far red as it possibly could go. I may not know much about cars, but I do
know what that means. I took the turn to get into Chick-Fil-A parking lot and
my engine starts smoking like crazy. I think cars make me nervous because I am
so clueless about them, so my legs and arms begin shaking and I can barely
think straight. The parking lot is full as it’s the lunch hour and pretty much
everyone goes there for lunch, so I cannot find a place to put my car, so I
pulled out of the parking lot and right in the next one just to pull over on
the side to be out of the way. I jumped out of the car and tried calling Chad
three times, no answer. A guy walks out of the store I was currently parked in
front of and I am sure he saw me shaking, he made eye contact with me and I
looked up and desperately asked, “Do you know anything about cars.” He told me
he thought he could tell I was in trouble.

He turns my car back on and says my engine is way
overheated, like I said, I knew that much. He goes to inspect the hood and his
hand comes out soaked with anti-freeze, apparently that’s not good. When he
finally gets the hood open, he couldn’t because of how hot it was the container
that holds the anti-freeze is literally filled with boiling anti-freeze. So we
spent the next half an hour trying to cool down my engine. Little by little he
would loosen the cap on the anti-freeze container so that the pressure didn’t
cause it to blow. Well after 15-20 minutes of trying that, it blew. Next thing
you know anti-freeze is literally shooting out everywhere. At this point I
called Chad’s work phone and had them radio him and call me. As a wife, I hate having
to call my husband at work with bad news; over the phone is the worst way to do
this. So I told him what was going on, and I could immediately hear the
discouragement in his voice. We just got the car fixed yesterday, why is this
happening? I told him I was going to call his brother, since he lived close to
where I was and see if he could come and get me. The guy working on our car got
it to cool down at this point, and offered to take me home but I said I would
be alright hanging at Chick-Fil-A for awhile.

I went into Chick-Fil-A, ate, and hung out there watching
the car for about an hour. When my brother in law got there, we had to push the
car out of the way into the back of the lot. Then we headed back to church to
pick up Chad, so that we could bring him to the car. Chad talked to his dad and
we were hoping it was just a belt problem, or they were hoping because I don’t
even know what that is. Well after looking at the car for another 30 minutes we
couldn’t visibly tell what the problem was. The closest dealership/car place
was more than a mile away, but it would take less than 5 minutes to get there.
My brother in law drove us down there to see if they could help out, but they
basically said we would have to tow it to them and they couldn’t look at it
until the next day. So we headed back to the car and called the dealership that
fixed it the previous day and told them what was going on, they said they would
make time to look at it if we could get it there before close. Well they wanted
us to limp it there, another term that I just discovered yesterday, but I just
did not feel right about that at all. We went into Chick-Fil-A again to see if
they had a jug they could give us full of water to pour into the anti-freeze.
By this time the manager had already seen me numerous times. He overheard me on
the phone explaining the situation the first time I was in there, and he had
already filled up my water bottle, and gave the guys water as we were working
in the heat outside. Someone had just thrown an old bleach jug in the dumpster
and he has them get it out so that we can have it, first of all wow, how sweet
is that? He cautioned us about limping it all the way to the Ozark dealer,
which would be another 20 minutes, just because of the risk of blowing out our
engine. He was right, that was not a good risk to take.

During all this my brother-in-law is talking to his fiancé who
has Triple A. If she is at the place the car needs to be towed, they will let
her tow any car for free a certain amount of times a year. So she decides to
bless us with one of her free tows and gets our car to the dealership in Ozark.
We ended up waiting another hour and a half at Chick-Fil-A for the tow truck,
but it finally came. We didn’t make it before the dealership closed, so we left
the car and a note and headed home. Needless to say it was a very long day, and
we were ready to be home.

I guess I am not just telling you this story so you know how
my day was yesterday, although sometimes for such a talkative person like me it
helps to talk/write it all out. I am telling you this because I want to share
with you what God spoke to me as I wrote in my journal at the end of the night.

Sometimes things go wrong, sometimes life gets a little
messy, and there is nothing we did to make it happen and there is nothing we
can do to make it stop. But no matter how messy life gets, God is allowing you
to go through exactly what it is you’re going through for a reason. I’ve been
singing the lyrics to a Group 1 Crew song a lot lately, “Although he might let
you bend, He will never let you break.” I have no idea why God allows us to go
through certain things in our lives, but I do know that He has a reason for it.
Whatever that reason may be, we have a decision in the midst of our hard times.
We can start blaming Him for putting us through one of the worst things we
could ever imagine. We could break down and say this is not worth the trouble.
Or we can pick up our head, even if tears are streaming down our face, and say
that we know who holds our world.

I know who holds my world; I know that I am in the palm of
His hand. I know that every time I make a decision to trust my Heavenly Father
despite the circumstances I am in, that is just another reason for the enemy to
take me out. I know that as Chad and I may feel like we are going through the
fire right now, we are going to come out gold. Our faith is going to be
stronger, our marriage is going to be stronger, and our victory is going to be
greater. God will never put in our lives more than we can handle, He knows when
we’re ready. The key to making it through though is to realize that although
God will never give us more than we can handle, there is more to it than just
that. God will never give us more than we can handle with His strength. I am
telling you right now I could not handle this on my own; I would probably
already have broken down in tears. But I am telling you the same God who gave
power and courage to David to take down Goliath is the same God in my life. Even
if I have tears streaming down my face, I can stand and know that with God’s strength
I can handle this because I already have the victory.

Whatever you may be facing, whatever you feel like is
tearing your world to pieces; remember you already have the victory. Stand tall
in your confidence that God holds your world, although you may feel like you
can’t bend anymore He promised to never let you break. In God’s strength you
can make it through anything, and you will come out better on the other side.