Our Testimony of the Nightmare Trip to St. Louis

June 20^th 2012

God is ever Faithful

It’s so easy for me to pray for other women, to tell them of how God provides and to just trust in him and he will take care of everything; just like the bible says. So easy to say that, but when it comes to my OWN struggles, my OWN worried, sometimes my faith is just as lacking as Peters was when Jesus told him to step out of that boat and walk on the water. I have always thought of this story in the bible as a parable of how we should always keep our eyes on the Lord, trust in him, and when we don’t…when we look away with doubt at how far away we’ve stepped from that “boat”, then that is when we fall. But if we trust in him, and his ways, keeping our eyes on him, he has plans for us that far exceed what we can even imagine.

Let me tell you about my newest adventure in what I should start to call my “Faith building Journey” J

Yesterday am we left our small town and drove the 2.5 hours to St. Louis Childrens where our youngest was seen by a pediatric specialist. We went to our appointment, we won’t talk about the anxiety of making a wrong turn in construction in St. Louis lol. After the appointment we ventured to the St. Louis Arch and that can be a whole OTHER blog post about how God protected me and calmed my inpending panic attack!

Later that evening we took off  to check out Joes Crab, a restaurant that I had always wanted to try out, and I knew to take my camera because I had heard the stories of how cool it was. It sure lived up to its hype! But anyways, we went back to our hotel, took the baby swimming for his first time ever, and had a relaxing evening.

When we woke up today, I should’ve known right from the get go with my headache that we should just head home. But, my husband wanted to go to the zoo, so off to the zoo we went! On the 30 mile drive into the city we were listening to our praise music, said a prayer together (we had been getting on each others nerves all morning so though we had better pray together  before we slapped each other lol), and then proceeded to talk about the new church we have been attending.

We were talking about how we had been visiting churches, and how this particular one felt like where God wanted us to be and that we should decide so that we could start paying our tithes to the church and get more involved. As we talked about it, we were remembering the few times we have been there and how at ‘home’ we felt, how much the spirit of God was working in the church, and how the atmosphere was just brimming with the feeling of revival about to explode there. We really didn’t get to finish our conversation, or come to some “ultimate” decision about it, because we made it to the zoo, got out of the car and of course went about our day.

Fastforward about 3 hours and we were tired, sunburned and ready to go home! Walked to the car, I took one ‘last’ picture of our day which was the baby passed out asleep in the stroller with bright red cheeks from the heat. We got everything loaded up and ready to go…..and our car wouldn’t start.

Well, we had never had car problems before but it was obvious that it wasn’t the battery. My husband hit the starter, tried everything, nothing would start it. I was praying, but God chose not to start it. The first person he put on my heart to text and let know that we were having car troubles was the Pastors wife. The pastor of the church that we were discussing on the way to the zoo. She texted back immediately saying that she was on her way home from work and would call me as soon as she got in.

In the meantime we called both of our parents. No one offered to come help us, come pick us up, send us money, nothing. Did I mention that we had $13 left on us??? (We never travel with more then we are going to need and I plan everything, so I knew EXACTLY how much we were going to need for our trip, and the way I saw it was that we still were going home with $13 left over!) No tow truck would come without money. No mechanic; no one, and I knew we had to do something, having a 6 month old it’s not like we could just sleep in the car, we HAD to get home.

The pastors wife called me back and told me they were most deff. Coming to get us, but they were working on a car trailer so that our car wasn’t left behind also. What a blessing! We will call that blessing #1. The park rangers came and tried to help, finding out they couldn’t they let us come sit in their office (where I am now typing this to post onto my blog later actually) where there is air conditioning;praise the Lord! So that is blessing #3.

Remember me saying we only had $13 with us? Well, we were hungry. Knowing that it was going to be hours before help came to get us, we walked the park and looked at a couple menus. The cheapest things were “kids meals” of a hot dog fries/chicken nuggets and fries/or a cheeseburger for 9.90! My husband of course told me to get something to eat, but I didn’t knowing he was hungry as well. So, we went back to the ranger office and sat with the baby. We did NOT mention that we were hungry, were not talking about anything, in fact it was a completely different woman at the desk then we left to see about food, but after about 20 minutes of just sitting here she comes up to us with a plate of 2 huge hot dogs, ketchup  & mustard, a bag of graham crackers, and offered us cold water. Praise God, he DOES provide all our needs! That’s blessing #4.

Blessing #5 comes to this moment. Yes, I would rather be home, where we would be by now if our car hadn’t broken down. BUT, God has proven to us that we should be keeping our eyes more on him, trusting in his guidance, and that when we do look away from his word and promises to provide all our needs is when we do doubt, and then eventually fall.

At this moment there is still about 2 hours before our help arrives, but praise God that these men from this church, these men that barely even know us are driving to ST. Louis to pick us up, WITH a car dolly to haul our car home! Praise God that he has made it very clear to us where our church home is going to be, and where we will pay our tithes. We now know that we have family in that church, we may  not know them that well yet, but being our true brothers and sisters in Christ, the Lord has placed them in our lives for a reason and I am so thankful!

So, as I look over at my son sleeping in my husbands arms, and as we sit in a rangers office at a closed zoo, I am just in awe once again of Gods loving kindness, mercy, and his oh so gentle way he used to show us we need to have more faith in him to provide for our needs.