My Friday Morning Miracle

This morning I ran into a little miracle of sorts. You all know our 2001 Saturn blew its engine almost two weeks ago and we've been without a vehicle. I've been begging rides here and there, and paying for those I couldn't get for free. Even without a vehicle, bills still need to be paid, groceries still need to be bought and toted home, and life still goes on.

I was lucky this morning simply because my neighbor was not so lucky. He's 82 and he still works, way across town, a 10 mile trip one way. But his old Toyota truck and he can still go the distance. His houseman job at a local casino/hotel has suffered cuts in working hours, as has every job in his department. He used to get reasonably nice money and five days a week in wages. This past six months, he gets one day a week for perhaps two weeks straight, then four days in one week, then no days the next week - it's completely unpredictable. His income is a mess and he is trying to pay his space rent and a mortgage payment from his social security. His wages take care of utilities, food, insurance and the rest. Until lately.

Anyhow, when he's not working, this sweet soul, who isn't thrilled about driving these days, often has me drive us both on errands. When he doesn't have any errands to run, he lets us just borrow the old truck.

This morning, I had his truck. I made two stops before my third and final stop for groceries. I loaded the groceries onto the front seat, turned the shopping cart around and slammed the door shut - with my purse, keys, cell phone, the whole shebang, all still inside the truck.

Ok. Here's the deal. It was 10 a.m. and already 102 on my side of the valley and my 72-year-old self doesn't adjust to these things as easily as it once did. Back inside the store, the manager let me call home (so my nephew wouldn't worry) and my neighbor (so he wouldn't worry), and then they found a wire coat hanger for me. While I was trying to jimmy up the door locks, a couple in their 40s or 50s offered to help. The pickup has one of those camper shells over the bed and the hubby asked if I had tried to open the tailgate or window. I hadn't. My nephew had suggested the same thing. However, I remembered that we (he and I) had used the truck recently and had locked those for sure.

After a few minutes of frustrated jimmying (the old truck's door locks are very smooth and were hard to grab with the end of the hanger), a cheerful elderly Hispanic employee passed us while he was rounding up shopping carts. His comment was simple - "Try the back door."

Well, I'm not totally stupid. Duh. If my nephew suggested it, and the husband helping me suggested it, and finally this fellow suggested it, we tried it. Shoot. The durn thing was unlocked. The hubby climbed in and crawled over everything and into the front seat and unlocked the doors.

I remembered then that my neighbor had taken his truck out once after we had last week and he had obviously forgotten to lock the back.

Meanwhile, I had nothing on me to thank any of these people with, so I did the best I could with a very lame but heartfelt, "Thank you so much - I'll keep you in my prayers."

At that, the Hispanic employee pushed open his sweater to reveal his name tag - That final suggestion was made by none other than Jesus!

Dear Lord Jesus, thank you for the help you sent to this hot and worried child this morning. So sorry you had to repeat the message three times before I got it (sigh).