#givethanks - day 7

 Today, I am grateful that we have a Heavenly Father that hears and answers our prayers, and that sometimes, I have "eyes to see and ears to hear," and am aware enough to call these answers "miracles."  Here is one example.

The year was 2013 and my hometown was still in the throes of the 2008 recession.  Things.  Were.  Not.  Good.  I had spent nearly 20 years with a local bank, but layoffs had been going on for more than 2 years at this point, and I knew my name was on the list.  The writing was on the wall and it was only a matter of time until I was laid off.  My blood pressure was the highest it had ever been.  I was stressed. 

There were a lot of problems to deal with, not the least was that I had grown to hate the job I used to love, but the most immediate problem was that I was driving a 2004 minivan with almost 200,000 miles on it, and things kept breaking.  First it was plastic parts here and there, no big deal.  Then the speedometer went kaput, but I managed that pretty well.  Then in the fall of 2012, the air conditioner went.  Good thing it's fall, I thought?

Fast forward to February.  We had a couple of warm days, and I realized Spring (and following that, SUMMER!!!) was coming.  I live in Florida and I had a car with no air conditioning!!!  The estimate to fix it was almost $1000.

I had been praying that somehow I would be able to get enough money to repair the air conditioner before the weather warmed up.

One Saturday afternoon there was a raging rainstorm going on outside - the kind you only get in the South, and can't appreciate until you've actually experienced it - and there was a knock at the door.  A drenched stranger stood on the doorstep.  He said he had been driving by and noticed the 1992 Cadillac Seville that was sitting in front of the house.  He explained that he refurbished Cadillacs and asked if it was for sale.  

The car was in fact sitting in the front yard, but it did not have a "For Sale" sign on it.  It hadn't run for a year or two, and we really couldn't figure out what to do with it.  It had beautiful leather interior, but honestly, a car that doesn't run isn't much more than a giant paperweight.  

 Did I mention it was pouring rain?

Did I tell you that we live a couple of blocks off any main street?  There was no way - NO REASON AT ALL - for him to have been driving down our street in the middle of a thunderstorm.  In fact, he lived in Mobile, Alabama, more than 60 miles away.

And he wanted to buy our car.  Our dead, hadn't-worked-in-years, car.

He offered us $900.

I said I had to get the title out of the safe deposit box and he could meet me at the bank on Monday, which he did.  He gave me $900 cash.  I called the repair shop and made an appointment for Thursday.

I took the car in  to get the air conditioner fixed on my way to work Thursday morning.  It cost $872.00.  

I got laid off that afternoon.

How well my Heavenly Father knows me.  As they say, timing is everything. If my appointment had been on Friday, for example, I know that I would not have spent the money on the air conditioner.  I would have thought of a thousand reasons why I needed to save the money for "a rainy day."

And so, this once, (and a few other times in my life,) I was very sure that my own personal miracle had just taken place.  I am grateful for a Heavenly Father who knows and loves me, and hears and answers my prayers.