How Have You Been Blessed?

The month of November was a rather hectic and irritating month for us. This is mostly because of our vehicles. Who knew inanimate objects could cause so many headaches? I noticed as I was driving from work one day that our Sebring was acting very strangely, and had a difficult time accelerating. Lance didn't have much time to do any work himself, so we took in to the mechanic. It's the transmission. Right. Not a cheap fix, but okay, we'll suck it up and pay it.

Life moves on, and I'm going to get E from daycare in our old, rusty Saturn when I switched from reverse into drive, and my car starts convulsing. Seriously. It was terrible. We find out that it's a semi-priced fix, but worth almost as much as the thing is worth. So, we decide to junk and get a different car.

Well, that leaves us with zero cars. And while L walks to work every day, my job isn't one that I can just be dropped off and picked up in eight hours. My car IS my office. So we drove down to L's parents and they were kind enough to let us borrow an extra vehicle they had. Yay, we have a car again until we find another car or our Sebring gets fixed.

What do you know? Two or three days after driving the thing, that car is losing brake fluid at a much faster pace than it should. Is there a leak? Probably, but L didn't have time to fix it before I had to work the next day.

Praise God that L works for a company that is incredibly laid back in their policies. Family members are allowed to drive the company vehicles. I prayed a million times that I wouldn't break it (seriously, I felt like I broke every vehicle I drove). I did NOT want to be the wife that broke the company car, you know?

My prayers were answered, the truck didn't break, but we had to buy a vehicle for me to drive. Now, L and I were pretty happy with our two paid off vehicles. Honestly I was hoping our Saturn would last a lot longer than what it did. We've also tried to prevent taking on any more debt - it certainly has made us feel like a slave (Proverbs 22:7).

Quite honestly, I was pretty disheartened. L and I have made some serious sacrifices to save what we've saved, and we were so very very close to being to our goal for the year. Now, though, I am just so thankful that God has given us the desire to make those sacrifices, as well as the means to save. Just last night we've heard of three people in our church losing their jobs, and here I am, complaining that I have to take some of our savings to buy a car. Praise God that we have steady money coming in, and that we still have money in our savings. Actually, that's just one area in which we're blessed.

In the spirit of the Christmas season, how do you feel that God has blessed you? He's a mighty, wonderful God that we serve. Let's praise Him in this.