God Brought Me Winter Tires

I'm not half-bad at playing house. I say playing house because that's what it feels like. Like not that long ago I was three feet tall and baking an imaginary cake in my imaginary kitchen and now I bake real cakes in my real kitchen in my beautiful house while throwing in a load of laundry, paying the bills, determining the most efficient heating strategy for the winter and trying to dust the living room before the timer on the cake goes off. I enjoy it. And like I said, I'm not half bad at it. I'm only around a 7 on the scale organizational awesomeness but when it comes to domestic ability it seems to do the trick most of the time.

The rest of the time it's not enough. Playing "real" house is hard work sometimes. Staying on top of everything requires vigilance, money and motivation. There are some parts of playing house that escape me at times, like changing the batteries in the smoke detector (whoops), keeping track of which week the town graces us with the favour of disposing of our garbage as it seems to change every month, shovelling my driveway and most sadly, keeping up with my car maintenance.

My poor car. I love it dearly though you would never know by looking at it. You'd think I'd be nicer to it considering its the only thing that's gotten me safely from point A to point B in the crazy-insane amount of driving I do. However, I usually take it completely for granted, that is until I start to feel that familiar vibration. You see, much like its owner, my sweet little car has a bit of an autoimmune disease that causes it to prematurely wreck its own tires. It can't be fixed. So my car and I, we go through a lot of tires. That's downright pricey.

I think any home owner would agree that home-owning in general is pricey and that when it comes to finances some months are better than others. This is not a particularly stellar month in the cheque book. In fact, I would describe this month as being a traumatic hemorrhage of money. Not a AAA per say, but not a paper cut by any means either. But what's a gal to do? I guess I'd rather have a financial hemorrhage than an ITLS case study with my name in it because I drove with bald tires through an early October snow storm (oh wait, that's exactly what I did). So I set out to my local OK Tire shop to get a quote.

One of the many great things about living in a small town is the local business owners. I walked in to OK Tire and my tire guy knows me by name and he knows the make and year of my vehicle off the top of his head. He's the only mechanic I actually trust when he says he knows what's wrong with my ambulance - so my tire issue, he's got that covered. Unfortunately, even with a good deal, the price of winter rims and tires, along with the knowledge that I'd need to buy new summer tires in a few bitterly cold months was enough to make my eyes water. So as I stood there, comprehending which route of credit debt I wanted to take, God intervened.

Seriously! Groan or shake your head or do what you will but its the truth. Sometimes we wait a long time for an answer to our prayers and sometimes the answer is "no". However, every once in awhile God answers our prayers in such a way that we can not even consider denying his absolute presence in our lives. In this case God answered my prayer lickety-split and my eyes were then watery from the awe of His goodness.

What happened? Well, my tire guy looked up from his paperwork and paused as he stared blankly for a moment before saying, "Wait a sec, there was a guy in here earlier who mentioned he needed to get rid of some winter tires for your model of car. Should I make a call for you?" My head was nodding faster than a bobble-head doll on a grader. Within 24 hours my amazing tire guy had contacted the seller, inspected the tires and negotiated a price for me. This intervention cut my cost in half. On top of that, the seller also had summer tires that had barely been used that he also sold to me for an awesome price.

I'm thankful that my tire-guy was willing to go out of his way to help me and that there just happened to be a man in the store earlier that day looking to sell some tires from a vehicle just like mine. Most of all, I'm happy and eternally excited that I have a Lord for whom no issue is too big or small for Him to care about and that He is teaching me to see Him in the little things, call for Him during the little things and trust Him in the little things.

Even if it's just a set of winter tires.

Awesome Stuff #6: Help from Strangers

I’m not going to lie. It was a bit of a rough night. After working a busy day shift with only three hours of sleep in me and in very icy and snowy road conditions I headed home, prepared for the fact that due to the amount of snow that fell out of the sky I would likely have to park my car on a plowed street and walk the rest of the way home. This did not deter me as I knew that my baby Jack was at home waiting for me. But it was worse than I had expected. Much, much worse. The west side of the highway probably got more than double the snow than the east where I was traveling from. This in its self is not a shocker. Living in relative proximity to the mountains - actually living in Alberta at all makes a massive snowfall an expected occurrence. HOWEVER, it becomes a bit more of an issue when your municipality decides that plowing the roads (any of the roads) is simply not on its list of things to do.

I needed to get milk from the store where I proceeded to get stuck in the parking lot. A wonderful man saw my plight and began rocking my car until I was free from what our slightly oddball news meterologist calls “grippy snow”. Grateful for the help I proceeded to head home and turned onto what is not a primary road but the largest north/south running street on the west side of town only to find a foot of snow spread across it. I kid you not! In the wisdom of my “many” years of winter driving experience I decided to take a high-speed run at it, figuring that it surely couldn’t be like that the whole way through. I made it about halfway before I lost control and 360’d it to the buried curb. Miraculously I managed to rock out of that one myself and continued the chaotic path to my street. I went to turn into the street I planned to park my car on and was dead stuck. Actually, that’s not even true. I was completely high centered. Spinning in the air. 


First I was given the blessing of two young men who began trying to push me out. After about 15 minutes of pushing another two gentlemen joined the efforts until I was free for a whole 5 metres before another two guys pushed me again until I was well away from my home where Jack waited. I could not stop. There was no where I could stop the car without getting stuck and I needed to still get out for work in the morning. I was so frustrated! What did the town expect us commuters to do? I finally decided that the best option over all was to head back the direction I came - back to work and ask for the hospitality of friends for the evening. They gracefully accommodated me. On top of that my dad offered to go and get Jack just as soon as the streets were plowed (he also ended up shoveling my driveway {thanks dad} ). 

You might think that this is where the story stops and I end with an AWESOME. But it gets better!

It is definitely awesome that I have friends and a dad that would go out of their way to help me out. It is especially heart warming when you have a total of seven strangers that stop what they are doing to push you out of a rut. 

But you know what else is awesome? Getting to be one of those strangers! I came home tonight and got stuck again trying to turn onto my road. Another stranger jumped out of his truck and pushed me out. I yelled my thanks as I struggled to get control on the road and began thinking how I wished I could somehow give back - I mean I just had a platoon of strangers help me out in the past 24 hours, I should be contributing something back in the way of blessings. 

I finally made it to my beautiful home and quickly jumped out and shoveled the remains of the plow so I could pull into my snow-free garage. Suddenly a car came by and stopped and three women around my age grabbed shovels out of the trunk and began shoveling one of the driveways a few houses down from me. I could tell from the conversation that this house belonged to someone they knew didn’t have anyone to help shovel their driveway. I was being given a chance to give back! I brought my shovel and together the four of us shoveled a truck load of snow out of that driveway. 

What a great feeling.

So! Having strangers help you out and being able to help a stranger out. . .

AWESOME!!!!!!!!