Certain lessons in life become pivotal moments—frozen moments—when God clearly sends a message for life: “I’ve got this one, Judi. Be patient, and you will see how I work this situation out for you.” I had been seeking God in prayer regarding the tendency in my life to figure everything out and then ask God’s blessings on my oversight of a problem. Somehow I knew that things were out of sync spiritually because I tipped my hand to God to acknowledge Him only after my plan was in motion. My personality is a take charge, can do, move quickly personality. So the compulsive part of my personality was to have all my proverbial ducks in a row—to be organized—to be checking off my to do lists—to serve others in whatever way that I could by helping or giving—to convince myself that my way was best because of my earnestness to please others by doing for them. But I met these tasks realizing that my to do list did not include asking God’s blessing. Something had to change. What was that something?
With three teenagers in our home at the time of this lesson from God in my life, we tried to encourage each one of our children to get a job at sixteen years old—having responsibility where they were accountable to someone else than us, we felt, built character or revealed a lack of character. We also tried to buy each one of them a “beater” vehicle when they were ready to take on that responsibility. Friends of ours owned a car lot that catered to people who needed a vehicle that would not cost more than 1-2 thousand dollars. Since we lived very near to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, we referred to the cars as Upper (pronounced you-per) Beaters. But those beaters got our kids where they needed to go—off to their respective jobs.
Our middle daughter, Jennifer, had a string of cars that decided to die rather quickly under her supervision. Her first car, a beat-up SUV, blew an engine soon after we purchased it for her. We could not have foreseen that issue. Her second car, a little red, stick-shift tin can, ran low on oil, so we sold it to a guy who did not mind putting oil into it constantly. We warned him that this was truly a problem that he should not ignore. Well, he decided to drive the car to Milwaukee and back without adding any oil. That engine then gave up the ghost soon thereafter. Thankfully, we had the man sign a paper that he purchased the car “as is,” and he agreed to add oil regularly. He wanted his 600 dollars back, but he did not hold up his part of the agreement—to maintain the oil. Car number three is a blur—I do not remember the specs on that one. However, car number four for Jennie was a cream-colored sedan. She worked at McDonald’s at the time, so she would scoot on the back roads to Iron Mountain, Michigan, to get to work on time.
One afternoon, we received a call from a nearby farm on those back roads. Jennie t
old us that her car “just quit working.” She had pulled over to the side of the road, but she had driven the car even with “noises” in it a bit too far. Our friend from the car lot towed the car back to our house because we frankly had no money to repair it. He told us that the engine had a costly, major repair needed. There was no hope for her cream sedan.
In my anxiety to get another vehicle for our daughter quickly, I began to scheme, plan, and figure out finances—even anticipating getting a loan perhaps. Then God stopped me in my tracks. I had spent many times in my life figuring things out on paper and then committing the plan to God. “You bless this, God.” “You supply the money to repay the loan that we just took out.” “You provide for the money that we just took out on our credit card.” Surely, we were faithful to God, and we wanted His best for us. But this time was very different. My hands were tied in the sense that we could not dive into another car purchase to help out our daughter. We could not “figure out” this dilemma. Even though Jen was paying for gas, insurance, and maintenance from her paycheck, the funds were not there for another car. Dave and I agreed that no vehicle purchase was in the near future for Jen. Clearly, this time, I knew God was telling me to wait. We would have to drive her to work, or she could borrow our car if we did not need it. This decision was a huge hassle; but it was how God was leading us.
So Jen’s little cream sedan sat on our farm, parked into some bushes on the north part of our property, out of sight and out of mind. The grass grew around the tires for about a month into another summer. We struggled to get Jen to work because of my schooling and because of the general crazy busyness of life. Once school would start, we really needed for Jen to get a car because her older sister was going to be busy at college, and her younger brother was not quite ready to drive.
One day in the middle of the summer, a dear friend of ours, Josh, called us to ask if he could come up north to our farm for a few days to get away. He was working at a Gospel-preaching summer camp. He was a terrific, young man; we knew that we would enjoy having him around. Despite everyone in our family running in several directions to our jobs and further schooling for me, Josh reassured us that he would simply enjoy a change of pace for a break. He also enjoyed great conversations with my husband Dave regarding ministry and leadership.
Josh arrived, and we enjoyed evenings in our living room catching up on his life and his summer opportunities at camp. Additionally, Josh was very interested in a certain girl, so he was looking for advice from us regarding that relationship as well. One morning while Josh was here, he asked about “the car” parked in the bushes at the edge of the property. We told him the saga of our dead sedan. We had no idea that Josh was an amazing mechanic. We knew that he knew a lot about everything, but we did not know about his expertise around vehicle engines. Dave told him that Jen had driven the car which further exacerbated the issue with something major in the engine. So the engine was basically irreparable without lots of money to invest. Josh asked us if he could take a look at the engine the next day while we were all gone.
Early the next morning, Josh took the engine on the sedan completely apart. He found the problem parts; he drove his car up to Iron Mountain, Michigan, to purchase the parts; and he came back home to fix the engine. By the time that we returned from work, the little cream sedan was in fine working order and parked by the door of our farmhouse.
To my shock, the little cream-colored sedan was in terrific shape. But my immediate thoughts were something like this: God, you did this for us? I would not have learned this lesson had I gotten a loan on my credit card or from the bank. We would have moved ahead without You. We would have worked out our own plan. Thank you, God, for having us wait during this month to see what You would do. God, I did not deserve this blessing. Thank you, God. I will never forget this lesson in my life—I needed this.
I absolutely had to learn that God had a much better plan in mind for us if I would step aside to wait, watch, listen, and learn. This was the beginning of a new journey for me—a turning point—a frozen moment in my life never to be forgotten. The scenario perhaps does not seem huge to many others, but it was huge to me. Consequently, I was able to sit down with our daughter Jen to explain what God had done in my heart through a broken down car and a human instrument of God—Josh—to turn my life around from self-reliance to God-reliance. Whereas I had trusted with all my heart on my planning, organizing, and creativity, what I really needed to do was to trust in the Lord with all my heart, lean not to my own understanding, and to acknowledge God in everything (Proverbs 3:5 and 6). God whispered very clearly me to me that summer, “Judi, I’ve got this.” Now that several years have passed since the repair of the cream-colored sedan, my life is much richer as I have many times reflected on my lesson with the theme of waiting on God.