Don't try to tell me God doesn't care

Last week, I attended a speech/language conference in Provo (about an hour away from my house) for CoughDrop, the company I now work for.  It was a two day conference and I learned a lot while I was there and am grateful I had the chance to attend.  I work with wonderful people, and I am really grateful for both of my co-workers who were patient with my newbie status.

Anyway, on Friday afternoon when things closed up I headed out into the sunshine and loaded myself into my car and started for home.  As I got on the freeway, I tried to accelerate to a zippy sort of speed, but my car refused to cooperate.

The culprit.

I pushed down on the gas pedal and could hear the engine rev but there wasn't much response at all in the 'get-up-and-go' level of the car.

What?

Was the car going to quit?  Was the engine ok?  Was some sort of catastrophic problem going on? What was I supposed to do about this?

Honestly, I was scared.  I was quite a way from home, had no one to help me, there was plenty-o-traffic, and to make matters worse my cell phone had fallen in the toilet earlier that day (yeah, I'm not used to constantly carrying it with me and I completely forgot it was in my back pocket) so it was out of commission.  That meant I was pretty much on my own.  I had no real way to get help if I ended up stranded on the side of some road.

I kind of panicked and in my mind called out to the only help I could think of, my Father in Heaven.

I explained (really fast) what was going on, told him I planned to get off the increasingly busy freeway at the first possible exit but that I had no idea how to get home via side streets and had no idea if my car was going to explode or not, so I asked for help.

And He helped.

I had a very strong impression that I should not exit the freeway, but instead should pay close attention to the rpm's on the car and keep the needle on that dial close to two.  I should also watch the road closely and manage my momentum by gradually increasing speed before hills or inclines so that the car would have enough oomph to handle the drive.  Finally, I felt like I needed to glance at the engine temp occasionally and adjust the rpm's if the dial started to head toward the "too hot" end of the dial.

Now, you should know that my understanding of the workings of engines is poor (at best), so the thoughts and answers that flooded momentarily into my brain were NOT from deep in some dark recess of my mind.  Such things do not reside in my head.  This was a message from God directly to one of His daughters just when she needed it.

But, back to the story.  By maneuvering the rpm's I was able to get up to speed (slowly, yes, but still I got there) and paying strict attention to the readouts I didn't overheat the engine.  It took longer than normal to get home, and there was no fanciness about the process, but I got there.

Once I exited the freeway, it was much easier to keep speeds where they should be.  On the road home, I stopped for gas (the car was near empty), and as I was entering credit card info I had another impression, something along the lines of "Why bother putting much gas in a car that you aren't going to be using for much longer.  It's time to get something else."

Yeah, that wasn't exactly what I was hoping to hear, but we have had problem after problem after problem with that car this past year.  Josh had felt at the start of the year that it might be time to replace it, but I hadn't been sure (I am much more prone to use things until they die and work to care for them rather than just throwing them out -- waste not, want not you know).  This impression put us both on the same page.

But, new car or no, it is really the miracle of a God in Heaven who is still interested enough in the lives of His children to comfort and guide them through small disasters that I am more impressed with.

I'm pretty grateful to have someone like Him watching out for me.