Thanks, curses and weirdly answered prayer

I've been thinking a lot lately about my car. I'm only a few months from paying it off, and it's running down. It does all sorts of weird things -- the radio randomly won't work, the clutch I just replaced is still sticky, the gear shifter requires some serious elbow grease. And there's the cosmetics: The windshield has been cracked since I bought it, the driver's side window tinting peeled off during a South Dakota cold snap. The leather was getting kinda cracked.

But it was a Subaru, and it could go anywhere. And she was my Betty, and I loved her.

But still, I worried it would leave me and the baby stranded somewhere. I worried we'd be stuck putting more money into it. I debated whether I should just see how much I could get for it, since Subarus appear to be really over-valued here. I thought about the joy of having a 30+ MPG vehicle. I weighed it against not having a car payment. Could we afford one once the baby came?

And I prayed for guidance. That God would make it clear what I should do. And in the meantime, I would try to hold in my desire for car less than 10 years old.

Thursday night on my way home from my lunch break, I didn't see an oncoming vehicle and turned left across traffic. He hit me on my passenger's side, sending us both across the intersection, collapsing my right front tire into the wheel well, shattering the rest of the window and stripping off most of the paneling on that side of the car. The passenger's mirror is gone.The entire passenger's side of the body essentially needs replaced.

The know-it-all tow-truck driver assures me "it's a wash" and there's no way my insurance company will pay to fix a 12-year-old Subaru with 120,000 miles on it (just a dent! It's a Subaru, for pete's sake!). But I have to wait for Geico to tow poor Betty to Spokane and have their adjuster go over it. And next week she'll tell me if I get a check or a mechanic.

And Lord, your will and all, but this is not really what I had in mind.


Now look, I'm not saying God made me have a car wreck. That's just stupid. But He uses the circumstances that are placed before him to his good purpose, and our betterment.

But the irony is not lost on me. Nor is the fact that Thursday was Thanksgiving, and though we've had many a dormant year, my mother and I were both reminded of the Cummings Family Thanksgiving Curse: A series of (I believe) 6 or so years in which each Thanksgiving brought something more horrific than the last, including, but not limited to, visits to mental health facilities and the end of my parents marriage.

This year was the most physically, but least emotionally, traumatizing. At least for me. It may be TJ's most traumatizing Thanksgiving ever, and it certainly will be a memorable one for Clark's baby book.

But last night, as I sat for three hours watching cable TV in the maternity ward of the hospital listening to little Clark's heart beat (he's fine), I felt a bit at piece. The car decision has been made for me. In a way I did not want and would have never asked for. But it's been made. And we're in God's hands, and he'll figure it out. Better than I could have.

And thank God for that.