July 6, 2005
We love miracle stories.
Our friend, who helps us with certain tasks, told us yesterday about a $2500 transmission breakdown on her Ford Explorer. She had no savings, and though several clients offered to help her with loans or gifts, she did not feel that was appropriate. She steeled herself to doing without a car in this summer-baked road-bound Texas city, until she could afford to pay the bill. It could be months, and she is responsible for elderly parents and doctors' appointments.
The night before she planned to ask the mechanic to tow the damaged car back to her, a long out-of-touch cousin telephoned from North Carolina. Twenty years ago, a troubled teenager, this cousin had lived with our friend for awhile. When she heard about the difficulty, and the looming mechanic's bill, she insisted on paying it by credit card the next day, from her income as an extremely successful real estate broker. She would not even listen to a refusal, saying she had been given a home when she needed one, and now she could thank her benefactor properly.
And, not incidentally, the episode inspired the grateful protagonist to undertake a programmatic savings-account project of the sort she had postponed far too long.
Until a solution appears we may not know how our problem will be solved, or where we have stored up resources, or whose heart will be touched by our needs. And the time spent in tears or worry is wasted. Better, more accurate, than worry is explorer-like curiosity about just how the answer will unfold.
Easy for us to say, which is why we're writing it here, now, to revisit if it's ever not so easy to say. Things work out. Reality is kind. We terrify ourselves with shadows and stories and predictions of misery, abandonment, and deprivation.
An expensive and gruelling hobby.
