Ever have a really wild day?
Do you ever have days that don’t turn out exactly the way you planned them? I had a really wild one of those last week! Got a few minutes for me to tell you about it?
At about 8:45 a.m. one day last week I typed the name of a restaurant into my maps app and took off for the 2 hour and 21 minute drive to a small Tennessee town to have lunch with friends. They were also driving over 2 hours from another direction.
I arrived early to do some shopping on the cute little town square. Soon my friends arrived. I hadn’t seen them in over two years. We had a great reunion and a luscious lunch.
One of our friends is a jewelry artist. I took advantage of her expertise and asked her about how to repair the necklace and bracelet I was wearing that day. Each has a charm that I had gotten banged up here and there. My friend recommended taking it to a jewelry store that did repairs.
After we said our goodbyes, I went back to the town square to finish my shopping. I noticed an old fashioned jewelry store. From the window, I could see a jeweler at work in the back room. Deciding to seize the moment, I went in and asked the lady—who turned out to be his wife—about repairing them. She said that sure she could do that and she would polish them up, too. While I waited, I decided to ask the man to look at my engagement ring and also to look at Ray’s mother’s engagement ring that I wear all the time. Though I know you are supposed to get them checked every year or so to make sure the stones aren’t going to fall out, I hadn’t done that in several years. Sure enough, both of them needed repair. “Can you do it now?” I asked. He said, “Sure. We close at 4.” It was already about 10 after 3.
Leaving my rings, I visited two or three other little stores and returned in half an hour. The wife asked my name and wrote up my bill in an old fashioned paper receipt book. “No charge for the charms,” she said. The total was $70.08. I pulled out my credit card. “We don’t take credit cards,” she said. I began to feel uneasy. I looked in my wallet and pulled out $62.00–every bill I had. I searched in the zipper part of my billfold for folded blank checks. No checks. “I can mail you the rest,” I said. “No,” she said sweetly. “It’s the end of the day. Don’t argue with me.” She crossed out the $70.08 on my bill and wrote $62. I thanked her profusely and walked out feeling terrible and grateful at the same time.
I walked to my car, got in, and called Ray. We figured that I should be home about 6:30, arriving about 45 minutes after sundown. I headed for home. I had driven only a short distance when I saw a low tire pressure notification behind the steering wheel. Oh, no, I thought. I pulled over and searched on my phone for a tire place in this little town. It was 4:16. I found one place. It closed at 4:30. I called them and a sweet female voice assured me they would wait for me.
When I arrived, she came out of the facility and waved me to the place I needed to me. The tire is ruined, the first man told me. “I can smell it.” He began to put air in it. I told him I had to drive over 2 hours. He said they would put on a spare. “You’ll have to go to Walmart and buy a new tire,” he said. There was no Walmart in the little town where I was so I would have to drive 13 miles to another town.
The first man had to leave, so a second man put on my spare. As he worked he talked to me. First he would say, “Now you be careful.” Then when I expressed concern, he would say, “Oh, you’ll be fine.” Then again he would say, “Now you be careful.” I would express concern again and he would say, “Oh, you’ll be fine.” At one point he said, “You aren’t going to be driving on the Interstate, are you?” Needless to say, his mixed message was not very reassuring.
Meanwhile. I had called Ray and asked him to call Walmart to see if they had the tire we needed. Ray called back. No, Walmart didn’t have the tire but another tire place in that town did. It closed at 5, but they would wait for me to get there.
As I prepared to leave, I asked the man who had put on my spare what the charge was. “They won’t charge anything,” he said, “but you can tip me if you want to.” “Oh, no!” I thought. “I don’t have any money.” I told him so. He said, “There’s an ATM over there.” I told him the truth: “I don’t have a debit card, only a credit card.”
“I was going to go to Dollar General over there,” he said. At this point, I had so much on my mind that it didn’t occur to me that I could buy something at Dollar General and get extra cash back. So, I said, “I guess I could go buy something for you and leave it there for you. What were you going to buy?” “You don’t want to know,” he said. “Beer. I was going to get a 12-pack.”
Now, wouldn’t that have been a pretty picture—me going into Dollar General, buying a 12-pack, and saying, “A man is going to come and pick this up!!” With no more ideas in my head, I got in our car and drove away.
I had no issues with the spare. I drove to the nice waiting people at the tire place in the next town. They fixed me up, and I was on my way.
I stopped for some takeout along the way, ate it in a parking lot, and got back home at 9:00 p.m.
That day did not happen the way I had planned it. The day had bumps along the way, but God sent many blessings in between them.
I am sure you have bumpy days, too. Maybe it’s a flat tire. Maybe it’s an argument between your kids. Maybe it’s a math lesson that went haywire. Maybe it’s all that and more on the same day. Many of the blessings God gave me on my unplanned day came from people—from my helpful husband and from helpful strangers. Even the guy who wanted a tip so badly put on my spare and gave me a funny story to tell.
I don’t know what bumps you may face today, but no matter what comes your way, as a homeschooling mama God has blessed you with precious children to make each day a blessing–and give you funny stories, too.
The mind of a person plans his way,
But the Lord directs his steps.
Proverbs 16:9