I'm back! It's already late evening Thanksgiving Monday, but I must fit in a post on what happened yesterday. We were headed for a day at Marineland (we had season passes this year, and it was the last day before the park closes for the winter) but our plans went south when our car started indicating that the battery was dying...
My Mom was the most concerned and told my Dad to get off highway, less than 5 minutes later our car stalled at a crossing (the highway is the worst place to stall but on the list of bad places a busy intersection wasn't a good alternative) and it wasn't like we were out of gas and only needed a refill, everything stopped working, the lights, the tv, the windows couldn't be rolled down and the one automatic door wouldn't open. Something was broken and there wasn't going to be a trip to anywhere but a garage.
Obviously there were more that a few frazzled nerves, and some anger over the timing of this. But there was reason to be upset, we were an hours drive from home, my Dad couldn't find his phone and there was no one insight (except busy people in cars, their honking didn't help either) but that's when the first of a string of miracles happened, we know God took care of the situation.
A big man appeared out of somewhere, I didn't hear what he said but he quickly found out that we had stalled and took the situation in hand, "Let's push it over there!" he motioned to convenient spot on the other side that we had not previously seen. My Dad pushed at the front of the car in order to steer and the man took the back, slowly we started moving. I looked ahead for the most part, it seemed like the car was speeding up even though we weren't on a hill,I looked back to find three other men helping to push, they seemed to have come out of nowhere. One man shouted for my Dad to "Jump in and steer!" which he did, the car rolled into the open spot and there we stood. I looked around, one man was left, he had parked behind where we now stood, he got in his car, gave a wave and drove off, I have no idea where the other men disappeared to so suddenly.
We didn't have time to think when "Well, what now?" God was way ahead of us with another miracle. As I said we hardly had time to start worrying again because a tow truck pulled up behind us. He "Just happened" to see our car getting pushed and although his garage was closed he was more than willing to help us, he was one of the nicest guys I ever met. He got out of the truck and he and my Dad opened up the hood to see what had gone wrong. The man concluded that it was most likely the alternator ( the thingy that loads the battery, I don't know anything about cars:) he was most helpful, as I said his garage was closed but he phoned around to see what garages were open and which ones had the parts we needed ( a difficult task, on Thanksgiving weekend) but after 10 or so minutes he found as a garage at a Canadian Tire store.
The next problem was soon solved as well. He only had 4 extra seats in his truck, in the end there are 7 of us, in the end there was no choice but to squish (not that we minded) my sister sat between the driver and passenger seat, my Dad in the passenger seat, in the back sat my Mom with 7 month old Ryan on her lap, my brother in the middle and I had my 3 year old sister Sienna, on my lap. We got to the garage and had a test done on the car to find out if the alternator or the battery was at fault (turns out both) apparently the alternator broke so the car used up all of what was left in the battery which resulted in a broken battery.
The next few hours were hard, spending the day in a waiting room at a Canadian Tire garage wasn't exactly what we had in mind. My parents were stressed and the rest of us bored, and the only thing I got out of those gossipy magazines is appreciation of the fact that I am not and probably (hopefully) never will be, a celebrity. We wandered aimlessly through the store and tried to keep Sienna out of mischief (she's twice as much trouble when she's bored) I got kinda fed up with her spilled drinks, rolling around on the dirty floor and endless hand washing after she got her hands dirty. We all kind of started snapping at each other. At long last our car was ready and we started home, as well as having something to eat on the way.
It wasn't the kind of day I had hoped for. But God took care of us in this situation, who could ever call it a coincidence that all those men appeared out of nowhere to help, and that such a nice tow truck driver "just happened" to be there when we needed a tow truck the most? And we were able to drive home that same day so we had a happy ending after all. (And you know I'm a big fan of happy endings:)
