It started when I got into a car accident on the first really snowy morning in Grand Rapids. I had just dropped Kevin off at the airport for his five day trip to New Jersey and was on my way to work, with Maria in the back seat. My mother-in-law was meeting me there to pick Maria up to spend the day with her. I got off the highway on my exit and turned left onto the overpass. There is a light at the end of the overpass; it was red. I pushed on my breaks, but my car didn't stop. Instead, it slid three car lengths into the white pick-up truck that was in front of me, stopped at the light. I turned my wheel to the right so that less of my car would hit his, but since there is no shoulder on an overpass, I smashed into the truck. To make a long story short: the car was totaled. Maria and I were okay thankfully, as was the other driver. His bumper was dented, but that is all. I did have back and neck pain two days later that lasted for an entire week, but I am being treated by a chiropractor and am feeling better. Maria showed no symptoms of anything, so I think her car seat was effective! :)
The accident was on a Wednesday. Nine days later Kevin took my car, the Chevy Impala that we just use for me to drive around town in, to the mechanics as the muffler had been getting progressively louder over the weeks and was now at a deafening level. It turns out that it was more than a muffler fix. Now all I can give you is a very rough summary of what turned out to be wrong with it: something with the entire exhaust system. And the car had been leaking coolant for months, but we found out this day that it too needed more than just a patch job: something to do with the entire coolant system. And then the mechanic said that the break pads were 90% worn and that the steering could go out at any moment and so the car was unsafe to drive. All said, it would cost the same amount to fix the car as what we paid for it back in June!
So in summary, within a little over a week we went from two cars to zero.
Thankfully Kevin's grandparents are letting us borrow their car. I don't know what we would have done without their generosity!
I have been so stressed with getting organized for Christmas this year. It's the first Christmas that we've had two kids, that I've had a part-time job outside the home, that I'm potty-training (going on five months now), that our business has been so slow, and that I have family coming and staying for a week. (That last one is a great joy, it's just more planning!) There have been times when I just felt like the life I'm leading is too much for me to handle. (Not at all in a I'm-might-do-something-drastic kind of way, just in a I'm-going-to-work-myself-into-an-ulcer-or-heart-attack kind of way.) I know that the stress is due to my personality of being a perfectionistic, type A, people pleaser. Somewhere along the way over the past year and a half I've lost the ability to relax. I have a hard time falling asleep. Even though I'm exhausted each night, my mind races for quite a long time before I fall asleep. I feel like I've been running on adrenaline the past year and a half. I'm constantly doing something, because I feel like I always have something that I have to do. I do love my life, I just need to figure out a better way of living it.
Last week Carlos was complaining that a particular body part hurt. After two days I took him in to see the doctor. She took one look at it, showed me what was going on, and referred us to a specialist. She then asked me what was going on with his face. He had red, dry, bumpy patches under his nose and around and under his mouth. He had been sneezing and blowing his nose all night, so to me it just looked like he had done that too much. She looked into his throat and then swabbed his tonsil. It came back positive for Strep! And she said that what was on his face was impetigo, the strep virus on skin - highly contagious. My first thought was: Gosh, I'm so glad all four of us sleep next to each other in the same room! So our little guy was prescribed antibiotics for the strep, a cream for the impetigo, and we got in to see the specialist that same afternoon. The specialist informed us that Carlos needed surgery. The earliest they could schedule it was a week later. (Which is today, actually. The surgery went well and Carlos is recovering nicely. He will be up and around with not too many problems by tomorrow, so he and all of us will still be able to enjoy our Christmas festivities.)
So this has all taken place in just a few short weeks. But, like I said in my title of this post, we have been struck down quite a bit this month, but we are not destroyed. Amidst this chaos has been some beauty. There is a story of a dollhouse, one of an elf, and another of brotherly (and sisterly) love.
For Christmas I decided that I wanted us to give Maria a dollhouse. She plays with one at speech therapy and has so much fun. At the store I work at we sell a really nice wooden house, wooden furniture, and wooden doll family (and with brown skin too! Hard to find!) But even with my discount it's pricey. So I started looking on craigslist. I looked for a couple of different nights, but few were selling doll houses and no one was selling one that I was interested in. But then one night I saw a posting for a Fisher Price Loving Family doll house that included all of the furniture and dolls. It was $35.00. I looked it up on Amazon and found out what a great deal that was! I emailed the woman and said that I was interested and asked if she could email me a photo. She wrote back the next day and said that I was the second person to contact her. The first person was supposed to call her that day, but if she didn't, she would contact me. That night I received an email from her saying that the woman never called and that she'd send me a photo tomorrow. So the next day the photo arrived in the afternoon, and it was confirming. It was a really nice doll house in great shape, and it also included a car which I hadn't known about previously. Maria would love it! I wrote her back and said I would like it and that I could pick it up the next day. But then all evening I just didn't feel completely at peace. I felt unsettled. After the kids went to bed I looked at the photo again. Although it was a great doll house, it wasn't wood like I had wanted. What Kevin and I want for our kids and family just didn't fit with this toy. We don't like big plastic toys around our house. We have some, but we really prefer wooden and natural and green toys if we can help it. So I just felt this pull between two worlds. This doll house didn't fit well with our family but was priced affordably. A wooden doll house would fit our family, but was unaffordable. Do we just buy a family and maybe a few pieces of wooden furniture for Maria for Christmas and then save up to get her a doll house and more furniture later? Or do we just say: you know what, we can't afford what we want. That is the reality for most people. So just suck it up, and be grateful for what we can afford. The latter is what we decided and I felt okay with this. Before going to bed I checked my email one last time and there was an email from the seller. She said that she feels really badly but her daughter came home from school, saw the doll house all set up, and now doesn't want to sell it. She hasn't played with it in two years, but loved the way her mom (the seller) had arranged everything. She has two other doll houses so her mom asked her which one she would be okay with selling. Her daughter said that she'd be willing to sell her wooden doll house and so this email to me was asking how I felt about having a wooden one instead! She'd sell it to me for the same price. Incredible! I would never have thought to ask God for a wooden doll house for Maria, but He knew and fulfilled that desire of mine. Isn't that beautiful?!? (This email came the night before Kevin took my car in and discovered all of the problems with it.)
Yesterday there was a knock at the door. I opened it to see a man I didn't recognize standing there. He asked if I was Stephanie and when I said yes, he handed me what looked to be a tin of cookies and he said, "I'm supposed to tell you that this is from an elf. That's all I can say." And then he turned around and left. I looked across the street, thinking it was our neighbor's quirky way this year of delivering their annual Christmas cookies. I opened it up to find a note that said, "God loves you and so do we!" Under the note were not cookies at all, but coins! Lots and lots of coins! There was tissue paper underneath and I noticed a corner of something sticking out. I lifted the tissue paper to find dollar bills! And then under that tissue paper was more dollar bills! And then under that layer and the next and the next and the next were more and more bills! What?!? Who would do this for us? We still have no idea, but to the elves out there: THANK YOU SO MUCH! What a beautiful gift to us! We are humbled and grateful.
And then lastly, ever since the accident I have been wanting to get new car seats for the kids. The timing also coincided with me learning more about car seats and car seat safety at work, as we sell a top of the line brand there. The more I have found out, the more I realize how unsafe the car seats and booster seats we've been using for the kids are. They are expired (didn't know they could expire!) and don't attach to the car in a very safe manner. Most of the car seats on the market, although approved, are not the safest that they can be. There are many features lacking that have been proven to be much more life-saving. (I'm not going to go into detail here about all that I've learned about car seat safety, but feel free to ask me about it anytime.) Knowing this, it's hard for me to be okay with just buying any ol' new seat. But the ones that are the safest are of course the most expensive. So again, my battle in my head goes on about what to do. I was talking to my sister and brother-in-law about this yesterday and do you know what they did today? They bought us new car seats for the kids, the ones that I really wanted that we sell at the store I work at! Another beautiful gift from two beautiful people.
God provides. He rescues. He loves. We are humbly reminded of that as we celebrate Jesus' birthday this week. Merry Christmas!
