The Blessings of a Broken Car

We were blessed with a huge tender mercy this week: our car broke down.

You heard me right. I know it might not sound like such a great thing at first, but hear me out. Our little two door car has served three different Glenns in its sixteen year lifespan, and it was starting to wear out. I knew it was only a matter of time before it gave out completely, but I have been praying for a long time that it would last just a little bit longer.

Well, last week we decided we needed to take our little old car in to get the tires more winter ready. I drove it through Sardine Canyon last winter and had some pretty scary incidents where I don't know how I made it out alive in that car, so I wanted to make it safer this year for Donovan's commute to Idaho Falls. When he came home from having the tires looked at though, he said, "Our tires are legally bald. Actually, they're worse than bald." I was disappointed, but not too surprised since I had no idea when it last got new tires, and neither did my sister who owned it before me. So we sat down and started trying to find the cheapest price for tires (which was still more than I wanted to spend).

Only a day or two later, the car broke down as Donovan was coming home from work. He didn't know what was wrong with the car yet, but said there was a good possibility that the cost to fix it would be more than it was worth. I had a feeling our car wasn't going to survive this time, but I felt surprisingly calm about it. In fact, I jokingly remarked to Donovan, "Well, everything I was afraid of happening has already happened, so at least we have nothing left to fear."

Just for the record, I am never this calm in a crisis (and I did of course lose it later that evening as we were trying to figure out what to do). But it really was sort of a relief. Now I'm not going to have to worry all winter about the car going kaput as Donovan's coming home in a snow storm--or even worse, breaking down when I'm in labor and on my way to the hospital. And I realized that what might seem like bad luck was a huge blessing. If our little Pontiac had broken down only a few days later we would have already paid for new tires. I think Heavenly Father knew we were going to need to get a four door car with the baby coming soon anyway and He didn't want us investing any more money into a car we wouldn't be using for much longer.

He has a really amazing way of knowing these sort of things. That's been a major comfort to me lately. Trying to figure out how everything ready for Baby's arrival has been stressful and kind of scary. There have been times when I've wondered why she isn't going to a mother more qualified and prepared than I am. But keep reminding myself that the Lord has a plan for us, even if we can't see it clearly right now, and if we look to Him and do our part he won't let us fail.

Speaking of the little gal who is already turning our lives upside down, I've had about seven requests for a baby bump photo in the past week, so I'm finally giving in and posting one because I didn't feel completely frumpy in the new dress I wore on Sunday. 27 weeks now!

Oh, and in case you were wondering, we managed to work everything out in a very short period of time and we now have a new car. It is a four door and it even has air conditioning, which is something neither Donovan nor I have had in any of our previous cars, so to us, it's quite the upgrade! We are extremely blessed.

Blessings from my Mission: The Sacrament and Atonement

A few fast Sundays ago, right after I began my fast I suddenly became insanely thirsty. Not the kind of thirsty where water seems like a nice idea - more like the kind of thirsty I'd imagine you'd feel after walking through a desert for three days. And my fast had just begun, so I knew I was in for a very long day. For the next 20 hours or so, I just tried not to think about water too much.
I've never been so thirsty in my entire life. So you can understand why the next day when they started to pass the sacrament, I was eager for the water to come around for more than one reason.
I swear to you, nothing has ever tasted so good to me as that tiny cup of water did. It might not have been much but it was enough to quench my thirst, and it was such a huge relief. And then that relief got me thinking, that's really how we should feel about the sacrament every time we're able to partake of it. It's a huge blessing to be able to hit a reset button at the beginning of every week.

My mission taught me about the Atonement in two ways. First, I came to realize pretty quickly that there is no such thing as an exactly obedient missionary. Other people might disagree with me, but I'm convinced there isn't a single missionary out there who didn't make it home five minutes past curfew or who stayed at an investigator's longer than an hour because the investigator just kept talking (there's no way any southern missionary never faced this problem) or who didn't take advantage of every second of the day because they just needed to stop and have a good cry for twenty minutes. I just don't believe any missionary reached that level of perfection on their mission, no matter how hard they were trying. But I have a suspicion that's one of the reasons missionaries have so many standards to live by. I'm not saying I'm a perfect person at home, either, but I was a lot more aware of my imperfections on the mission, and it caused me to turn to the Lord and rely on the enabling and forgiving power of the Atonement.

One of the reasons a mission was so hard for me was because I had to watch a lot of investigators I cared about struggle through many different trials. As a missionary, I felt like it was my job to help them and make things better, and it upset me when I realized that in a lot of cases, there was nothing I could do besides teach them the gospel and invite them to lay hold on it. I knew that wouldn't make all of their problems go away. I learned to put not just my burdens on the Lord, but the burdens of investigators, recent converts, and returning members on him too, because I couldn't bear the weight of their load on my shoulders.

Essentially, I learned that the Atonement really is an all-purpose solution, and we can't overuse it. In fact, He wants us to use it as often as we can. My mission was a time when I felt extremely inadequate more often than not, but I think that's what Heavenly Father wanted, because if I hadn't been humbled to turn to the Lord, I wouldn't have been able to be led by Him as often as I was, and I wouldn't appreciate the sacrament and Atonement as much as I now do.