God's Laughter

God laughed at me yesterday … It had been a long, rough couple of days. It began when I had a flat tire on the way to work on Friday. That was a bad start to my day, but the kicker came when I found out that they would not fix the flat. It seems that my tire was in too bad of shape to fix. What made it even worse is that my rig is an all wheel drive. You can’t buy just one tire on an all wheel drive. You have to buy four at a time. The price for 4 tires for my Toyota Rav 4 was breathtaking. At first I just stared at him. When the news sunk in, the tears began. I could not stop the flow. I stood there and cried as the poor man tried to ignore the flood of tears. I knew that there was not enough money in my accounts to do what needed to be done.To add insult to injury, I had to sign a waiver to leave the premises without the new tires. I headed back to the office and started trying to figure out how I was going to buy the tires.

The day looked up when mom and dad came to spend the night with me. Dad was trying to help get my pellet stove working. I do not have central heating in my little farm house. I am dependent on the pellet stove to heat the house.. I really enjoyed my time with them, but even Dad’s expertise could not get to the root of the problem with my stove. When we finally ran out of ideas, I waved goodbye to them. I was feeling a bit persecuted to be honest. So much has happened over the last month. Grammies death, Debs death, Marilyn’s death, Gerrald leaving, no heat, bad tires, ….. it just seemed that the list was growing and growing.

I tried to shake it off and spent a quiet evening preparing for Sunday. Sunday morning I popped out of bed and left home Sunday morning at my usual 7:00 to head to church. Just ten minutes from the house a rock kicked up by a passing car came crashing into my windshield. My heart pounded and I stomped on the brake and brought the car to a stop. I looked in disbelief at the three concentric circles in my windshield. Bigger than a softball, just above the steering wheel. My eyes filled with tears and I looked up at heaven and said, “Come on God ….give me a break here!” Suddenly it dawned on me ….. I think He just did. It was then that I distinctly heard God laugh. It is hard to remain defeated when God is laughing. So for today I am choosing laughter. Tomorrow, well tomorrow I get a new windshield.