Calling all dads. You better teach your girls.....

Well, I didn't make it to church tonight.

If you don't want to read the boring story about my car trouble, please skip down to the part about my Dad.

I got about a mile and a half past my house out in the country and I had a blow out. The road is dangerous because it curves and twists and there are no shoulders to protect you from deep drop offs. It's a bad road.

I had trouble controlling the car and I happened to be able to pull over on the ONE space on that whole highway designed for pulling over. God is protective as well as gracious.

It just so happened that I was in a "dead zone" for cell phones. I couldn't get my church (I could hear them but they couldn't hear me, I couldn't get my folks, my neighbors, or anyone else AT ALL.

I had few choices after trying to get someone on the phone for 25 minutes.

I'm 43 and my Dad always taught me common sense and taught me as I was growing up to handle life's difficult situations with the perspective of keeping safe and keeping sane.

I decided that I was not going to get into a car with someone that I did not know. Probably 50 cars passed me by and never stopped. Many people leave the country to go to church in the city and vice versa. It was dark and I wasn't going to do it. There's that internal voice in a single woman's brain that wouldn't let me do it.

I also wasn't going to walk back home. It was just a mere mile and a half and I could have walked it quite easily, but it was dark and there was no shoulder to walk on. I would have had to have walked down in the deep ditches with the rodents and the snakes to avoid being possibly hit by a car.

So I drove back home that mile and a half on my rim. It was the longest drive I have ever made.

I had to wait about an hour until I knew that my folks were home and I called my Dad and he came over. He said that I have damaged the rim and possibly the car.

Oh, well.

Why am I talking to the Dads?

Because, when I was growing up, my Dad taught me all of the things about life that he would have taught a son.

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• He taught me how to check and change the oil in a car.</font>
• How to tell when things in a vehicle are going wrong and what to do about it.</font>
• How to tell when a businessman is trying to scam me because of my being female.</font>
• He taught me enough skepticism to keep safe and enough compassion to be a good human being.</font>
• He MADE me do things by myself like checking the oil in a car, making a deal with a car salesman at an early age, getting from one state to another by reading a map, and using a pistol.</font>
• He MADE me in my early 20's become proficient on a computer. He didn't give me a choice. He said, "I know you are moving out, but you can't leave until you can show me that you are proficient on a computer."</font>
• He taught me how to take care of myself just in case he were gone or just in case I had no husband.</font>
• He MADE me start saving money when I first got a job and he taught me how to manipulate money to my advantage.</font>
• He took me to register to vote when I turned 18 and talked to me the whole way there and back about a citizen's responsibility to vote and a Christian's responsbility to vote for the truth as best they can.</font>
• He taught me how to do my taxes and invest in the stock market and how to be a consciencious Christian woman.</font>

This may not make a hill of beans to anyone else, but I love him for it. He cannot MAKE me do anything anymore, but I still seek his wise counsel when I can't figure things out. His Christian ethics and advice are impeccably strong.

I love my Dad and he is getting old. He is almost deaf and his arthritis is really bad.

He's the greatest man I know and if not for him, I would be some mealy-mouth little nobody who couldn't take care of a pet canary let alone myself.

Teach your girls, all you Dads. You will be gone someday and they may not have a Godly man in their lives.

You never know.

Peace-

YSIC
Scarlett O.
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Aha! That's the one task that I'm not really confident in. I can do it fair enough, but it was soooo dark and I was "just" a mile and half away from my driveway.

I should have tried, but the darkness took over my confidence as I have limited experience in actually changing one without assistance.

I'm having all my tires checked tomorrow afternoon as I am pretty sure that I didn't run over anything and I can't remember exactly when I got the last new tires.

Peace-
S.O.

 

Well, I got new tires, but not a new rim. Totaled about $449. Not bad. My dad came over this morning before I went to work and decided that he would take me to work and he would change the tire and take it into town for a once-over.

I just didn't care and let him do it.

I have doctor bills and emergency room bills from a couple of weeks ago, tires to pay for, and income taxes to pay.

But God always seems to provide. I always seem to have just enough. I'm not rich by any means. I a single woman, teaching school in the lowest paid school district in the third lowest paying state.

But every time things like this hit my wallet (and they always seem to come in groups!), God provides and I don't starve to death. In fact, there is nothing that I am lacking. I don't have a fur coat nor a Mercedes, but I don't need them.

God is more than wonderful. He is specifically concerned with the details of our lives. He is so much more than just a provider.

He doesn't just sit up there in Heaven and throw out things that meet our needs like someone mindlessly throwing out corn to a flock of stupid chickens.

He carefully designed our bodies and planned out our lives and with great love and intimacy, meets the daily need of our lives. Sometimes needs that we don't even know we have.

God is more wonderful than human speech can say. I love Him.

Peace-

YSIC
Scarlett O.
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