Porsches, Trading Up, and Laundry!

Give thanks and the miracle is imminent.  That is how I've been trying to live since I first heard Ann Voskamp speak.  I had always lived feeling thankful, but I didn't realize how it was tied in to miracles!

We had a couple miracles yesterday and I can only attribute them to God intervening and blessing us as I didn't want to feel thankful!

Sometimes after I post on the blog, I then go and journal the more personal stuff and that's what I did yesterday.  I just wrote and wrote how I was feeling, pouring it all out before the Lord.  But as I did this I was still reading in Philippians and of course Paul says to present your requests to God, with thanksgiving. So I did.  I wrote out my requests.  I even wrote that I wasn't feeling hopeful, but by faith I would choose to believe God was faithful, recognizing the enemy's voice making doubt want to enter in.

Satan's other tactic if he doesn't get anywhere with me doubting God is making me doubt my husband and his abilities, clever eh?  Let me explain.  I've said it many times before, my husband can do just about anything he sets his mind to and do it well.  When we first got the Porsches, he figured he knew what was wrong with each one and estimated how long it would take, what it would cost, etc.  Over the last few weekends, it appeared with Porsche #1 that he was wrong.  Each time he bought a part and put it in, nothing would happen.  He couldn't make it start.

My sons were watching all along and were starting to think this wasn't going to work.  One of them came in and said to me a couple of days ago, "Dad can't figure it out.  It won't start.  It wasn't the part he thought it was.  He wonders if we're in over our heads.  Now he has no idea where to begin looking for what's wrong."  Guess what enters into my mind, just like doubting the faithfulness of God, this little feeling of doubt starts to enter into my mind about my husband and whether or not he'll be able to fix the Porsche!

But no, I recognized the attack fortunately - isn't that half the battle?  Sometimes I think Satan is so clever, but is he really?  No, not at all.  I don't ever want to give him that much credit.  He just tried an old tactic in a new way.  So I fought back with prayer and thankfulness, exercising my spiritual muscles.  I read yesterday in Philippians how we must "practice" this - I want to get really strong faith muscles, more than physical muscles, so that when the attacks come, I can fight them with a faith that is so spiritually strong it can withstand anything.

I wrote as one of my first requests, the fixing of the Porsche - I was looking for a miracle.  It could have been millions of things.  Where to start was what RM was wondering.  All day long it was bugging RM as he did his regular job, what was it, what was it.  Finally he sat at his computer, going on all the Porsche sites and entering the symptoms of the car.  All of a sudden he came across a comment on of the threads he'd been reading that sounded like it might have just the solution.  It meant driving out quickly to pick up a part, so he threw the boys in the truck and off he went.  I think the fact that there is a place nearby to even pick up the part is a miracle in itself.

When he came back, I was in the house working away.  Suddenly an onslaught of noisy boys came in so excited!  The car had started!  This time it actually stayed on instead of starting and then dying.  Sure enough, RM came in shortly after also excited - he'd fixed it!  He'd been right!  It hadn't taken a million different attempts, just the one.  We were back in business.

I got my first drive to the end of the street last night.  It felt like old times.  Trusting the Lord's goodness brought the miracle we needed, I'm convinced.

Another thing I wrote as a request was how our list of needs, equipment, supplies for the house and farm was far exceeding what cash flow was coming in.  I never know how God is going to answer, I just left it on paper.

Earlier on that morning, right after breakfast RM's truck disappeared with him in it going who knows where. I just assumed he was off to the bank.  I had just finished sitting with him and the older kids sharing what I had been reading in Philippians and we had all prayed and started our day.

He arrived back home a few minutes later saying, "What do you think of this idea?"  He went on to explain our new neighbour down the street wants to do a trade with us for some equipment.  That's where he had gone, to check out the guy's farm equipment.  This is the funny part of the story.  This other farmer wants this old, delapidated, antique threshing machine that has been sitting in our barn for, no doubt, over a 100 years! It is worth something to somebody, but not us!  We've been trying to get rid of this thing since we moved here, but no one wants it.  We figured we'd have to turn it into scrap metal.  This farmer/neighbour wants to trade his working manure spreader (which RM needed and was planning on buying with who-knows-what-money).  RM checked out the spreader and it looked ideal.  Was this guy for real?

As RM explained this to me, I realized God was working another miracle.  He was helping us to attain the things we needed basically for free!  We were trading up - how cool is that???  It really wasn't going to cost us a dime to get that equipment on our property and if anything this other farmer was helping us by getting rid of our junk!  Awesome.

Turns out, that is what we are now hoping to do with the Porsches, too.  We are hoping to aquire some other farm equipment by trading them for large farm machinery like skid steers, etc.  This trading up idea could really work in our favour!

Now, I still have a stinky basement, but yesterday I tried to thank the Lord for it.  In order to stop the leaking I had to go to the laundromat to wash my seven loads of laundry, but God was even in that.  How so, you might wonder?  Well, I turned it into a field trip!  I brought all the little ones and tons of quarters and it became the most fun part of their day!  It was a new and novel place to go.  The funniest part was watching my 3 year old.  He saw me getting change from the machine and figured this was a money making machine - how could he get some of that?  Very funny.  We brought some of our school books with us and actually got quite a bit done all the while being watched by a few Grandmas and Grandpas.  What a good place to go for encouragement!  It was as if God sent me there just to lift me up.  So many nice compliments from all of them about our children.  They seemed to be on their best behaviour, so they loved that.  Plus, they watched how much fun they were having loading, starting the machines....they were being very cute! So, if you ever need a lift, go with your kids to the laundromat!

Was that the answer I was looking for, not necessarily, but it was fun and I know RM will get to the basement and the disaster of plumbing eventually.

It was a good day yesterday.  God is faithful.  I don't need to doubt Him or even RM's abilities.  I know all things are under His control.  My job is to keep being thankful in all things, even the things that aren't looking like they are going in the right direction!