God, Fix Our Van!

God, Fix Our Van!

When our van broke down, our prayer for days was “God, please fix our van!”  Or “God, please make sure UPS delivers the part today!”  And then things began to happen and our prayer changed to “God, what would you have us do today?”  

On a Saturday we left home to drive across the country to visit our children.  It was a grand plan: visit four days with our boys, go camping and then drive to see our daughter and do the same thing.  Things were going fine until we tried to climb a steep gravel road toward a reservoir and things began to heat up. Literally. The van overheated and BOOM! The thermostat housing exploded.  I tried to remain calm.  Hey, no one’s hurt, my boys have another car to go get help.  It’s not so bad……I wish I had been calmer.

Plans look ruined.  What would we do now?  At least it was daylight and a tow truck was coming.  “Oh God, lead us to a good garage!”  And various prayers like that effused from our mouths.  Meanwhile, things started happening.  I met Mr. Gilmore on the mountain.  We had stopped right in front of his house and he ‘happened’ to have a Verizon cell phone booster which enabled us to call for a tow truck.  The truck was slow in coming which allowed us to get to know our new friend who was a Viet Nam vet, and had a difficult life story.  He was very helpful to us.  I gave him a copy of my book and then we were gone.

Meanwhile, the boys had found a great camping spot, among free range cows but that’s how it is out west.  They did a great job as problem solvers and we ended up having a nice evening.  The next morning decisions had to be made.  Would I let the local mechanic try to fix the van or tow it to a nearby city with a dealership?  We chose the dealership.  On the way, Tracy found us a nice hotel which just ‘happened’ to be next door to the dealership.  I could see our van from our hotel window.  But that would be the next night.  For we had one more night with the boys who did a great job again of finding trees, water and a free campsite, something else you can get out west.

The van had been towed on a Saturday, so no work could be done till Monday.  Worries about how much it would cost were put on hold while we discovered another part of Utah that we wouldn’t have seen otherwise.  Sunday, the boys returned home and we checked into the hotel next to the dealership.  On Monday, I walked next door and introduced myself.  Little did I know how well I would get to know Pam, Brian, Chad and Mike.  

Of course parts couldn’t be ordered until the problem was diagnosed so that brings us to Wednesday when the thermostat housing arrived.  In the meantime, Tracy and I drove out to Colorado to see our daughter.  Worries again were put on hold.  But I was still praying, “God, please fix our van.”  I had imagined that by the time we returned on Thursday that we could be on our way.  We had already logged an extra 2,000 miles on the rental car by going to Colorado and back.

Returning to our home-away-from-home hotel the manager and his wife greeted us, for we had become friends.  Why not?  We were quickly becoming minor investors.  Conversations soon developed and I was able to give him a copy of my book.  I was beginning to see a pattern here.  Each day that it appeared that we were delayed, another relationship was developed.  But I was still praying, “God, please fix our van.”

Back at the dealership it was revealed to us that both coolant fans and radiator were ruined and needed to be replaced.  Oh my!  Chad was struggling to find the parts for this twenty year old vehicle, but finally he located them.  “They’ll be here Monday.”  Monday?  It’s now Thursday.  What are we going to do for four days?  We had seen our kids, our mission was accomplished.  We should be on our way home.  “God, why can’t you fix our van?”  As I was lamenting our troubles with Mike, the mechanic, he started suggesting camping areas north of there.  North because it was well over 100 degrees in town.  At his suggestion we drove, our increasingly expensive rental, to Pine Valley where it was indeed 15 degrees cooler.  And lo and behold we discovered the most beautiful campsite next to a creek.  We had to pay this time and the free range cows were still there, but it was private and gorgeous.

I think it was at this point that Tracy and I began a PRAYER TRANSITION.  From “God fix our van” to “God, what do you have for us today?”  It’s good that we began praying this way because when we returned to the dealership, we learned that the parts dealer misled us and it would be another 3 or 4 days for another order to arrive.  The dealership had pity on us and gave us a loaner so we were able to turn the rental in.  We had more conversations with the hotel manager and his wife.  And I met Andrew.  We began conversations about life and faith, but I had run out of books.  

It’s a good thing also that we were praying daily to be available to God for whatever he wanted because we ran into what seemed like a Satanic attack.  A woman by the pool began accusing me of all kinds of stuff.  I’m not sure if I reminded her of someone she didn’t like or it’s possible that if we, as I believe, exhibited evidence of the Holy Spirit, then she, as a possible agent of evil, was bent on attacking and speaking evil of us to whomever she met.  It was a supernatural experience that kept me from saying what I was really thinking.  When I spoke to the manager the next day, he was very upset that we had been treated so badly.  

On another hot evening, we drove up to a reservoir where we met Raoul.  What began as a conversation about paddle boarding turned into sharing our thoughts about the after-life.  He said to us, “I knew there was something special about you guys when I saw you.”  And upon his recommendation we went the next day to another lake where we got to rent paddle boards.  “God, what do you have for us today?”

The following Monday, I resisted the “God, fix my van” prayer as we waited for UPS to deliver the radiator.  But, Hallelujah! It came and Mike installed it, gerry rigged a fuse to make the fan work and we headed home at 5:30 in the evening.  We drove back the southern route which took us near the Grand Canyon.  Nice job God.  And seeing those rock formations at sunset.  Wow!  

But would we rush home in three days?  We learned that a friend had just arrived home from Cameroon.  We got to have lunch with her.  Another friend we hadn’t seen in 20 years ‘just happened’ now to be on the way.  

We took time to evaluate what this trip had produced in us and how it could be seen as preparation for our venture into missions in the next year or two.  And why shouldn’t it be a model of how we face life normally?  It’s NORMAL to treat God as the cosmic Santa Claus, only throwing up our requests to him.  It’s quite the exception to consider that God’s plans just might be better than what we had planned.  

There were days in Utah when Tracy and I just sat there and stared at each other asking, “What now?”  We were so dumbfounded at our predicament.  We were stuck.  Should we fly home?  But what if this was God’s plan all along?  But even aside from that presumption, what would life look like if we saw each day as His day?  In the even bigger picture, what if we saw our lives completely at His disposal?  

We arrived home four weeks to the day of when we left. Two weeks overdue…according to our plan but exactly on time by God’s calendar.  We’re ready for the next adventure.  “God, what do you have for us today?”

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord.  “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts…”

Isaiah 55:8,9