I didn’t think yesterday would be a wonderful, marvelous, way cool, very good day. Not when the day began with me nervously eyeing the check engine light and praying the car wouldn’t break down on the way to the car dealership.
I was sure it wouldn’t be a wonderful, marvelous, way cool, very good day when the spiffy service technician said it would cost $125 to hook the car up to the machine and detect the problem before they called to tell me how much more it would cost to fix it. But, I had decided ahead of time this was an opportunity to trust God’s provision, even though two weddings in three months pretty much drained our savings account. So I didn’t loose control and snip at the spiffy service technician. Instead, I smiled and said, “Call me on my cell phone.”
I ate breakfast at my favorite coffee shop, savoring the luxury of the perfectly brewed, hot and bitter java. Then, I drove the loaner car to a shady neighborhood where I parked and finished my morning walk. It was too warm and muggy to be a wonderful, marvelous, way cool, very good day so when the phone rang and the service technician started talking, I braced for the worst. “Good news,” he said. “We diagnosed the problem and it’s covered under your warranty. No charge.”
Suddenly it was a wonderful day.
I picked up the car and headed home where I read my email. One was from a mom who’d found my book. She loved it so much, she bought ten copies for friends of kids with special needs. She wants to purchase forty more for a conference in May and is considering me as a speaker. The second was final confirmation for an interview with an author whose expertise will enhance my new book.
Now it was a wonderful, marvelous day.
After lunch I walked to the mailbox and pulled out two substantial checks. Then I had a phone interview with a former NICU nurse who is now the mom of a child with special needs. Her perspective will be invaluable resource for the work in progress. After that, the head chaplain at the University of Minnesota Children’s Hospital returned my phone call from last week. We scheduled an interview and he referred me to an expert in palliative care for children.
My day became wonderful, marvelous and way cool.
After supper, Hiram and I watched the DVD of the premier movie that led to the TV show, Monk, whose protagonist was a brilliant, obsessive compulsive detective. I couldn’t stop laughing.
What a way to end my wonderful, marvelous, way cool, very good day.
Not many days are like yesterday. But once in awhile God grants showers of blessings, not because I deserve them, but because he loves me, because he wants us to remember he is with us always. So on my next terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days – or on the next boring day when all I do is spin my wheels – when I can’t feel God’s presence and want to give up, I will think of August 31, 2010.
That memory will be the evidence of things unseen, the knot at the end of my rope, the hand that holds me – the hand of my wonderful, marvelous, way cool, very good God.
