It's a God Thing...

I have something to say that may shock some of you, others may not be so shocked. OK, so probably most of you won't be shocked, but I am trying to make this exciting - so, please just play along!! The something that I have to say is that... I don't believe in coincidence or the phrase just happened to. Nope, not me.

This morning after I loaded the boys into the van to take Jacob off to school, I put the key in the ignition and turned it. All I heard was hummm, click, click. Not such a good thing. Instantly, I remembered that Ethan had left the car door opened for several hours yesterday before I noticed it and was able to close it. What I should have done right then was go outside (but it was cold and I didn't want to be cold) and try to start the van. That way, if it started I would have known that all was well and if it didn't start, well, I could have Curt do something about it. Instead, I forgot about it.

Until this morning.

When it was even colder.

And, I had someplace to be.

Now, we do try to learn from our mistakes and a couple of years ago, Curt left the door open to his car and the battery went dead and a dear neighbor guy (I still don't know his name) came over and charged the battery with a great new invention - a battery charger.

OK, so they've been around awhile.

Well, we didn't have one and didn't know what to do with one if we did. Anyway, we decided "we should have one" and for Christmas that year we asked for and received a state of the art car battery charger.

It is snazzy.

But the only time we (I say we very lightly) had to use it was when Curt was trimming the bushes in front of our house and listening to the MSU football game on his car radio. Yeah, he forgot the radio was on and ran down the battery. I happened to be inside quite unaware of the goings on outside so I didn't witness the hooking up of the battery charger. But it worked. I was informed of that after the fact.

Back to today.

So I think instantly that all I have to do is hook up the charger (which has a great emergency start feature) and I will still be able to get Jacob to school on time. That was my plan. I popped the hood and I lifted the little bar thingy so the hood wouldn't fall on me and I grabbed the charger out of its box (we don't want it to get dirty or anything), I read the instruction manual and I hooked it to the battery and plugged it in. Nothing, not a twitch on the needle. I switched all the switches and still nothing. I fiddled with it for about 20 minutes (did I mention it was cold). I called Curt (he teaches High School and doesn't ever answer his phone) and left a "Call Me Immediately" message and then, my phone rang.

Here's the just happened to part, read slow, there are a lot of just happened to's.

It wasn't Curt. It just happened to be my friend Rachel and she just happened to ask if I was ready to get the big box out of my sun room because she was on her way to get it. The big box came from my Mom and contained bedding that she just happened to want to get rid of and Rachel just happened to think her Mom would want for her spare room and, she just happened to. Rachel just happened to be coming to my town today (if you saw her to-do list, you would totally get that that is a big just happened to), she just happened to call her husband who just happened to know all about battery chargers and just happened to be able to explain how to work it in girl talk. I got the battery charged and started the van and took Jacob to school, albeit a little late.

I don't believe in just happened to's because, well, it just takes too many just happened to's to get to where we need to be. It was most obviously, to me at least, a God thing. God has plans and He isn't going to let a dead car battery or anything else for that matter, stand in the way of His work being done. Whatever His work for today may be.