Lessons on the Lord's timing

So, quick update before the real post:

I am back from a wonderful trip! I had SUCH a great week at camp and Elena had a blast with my family. And Eric was still alive when I got home! :) So, pretty much it was a success. Actually, sweet man that he is, when I walked in the door, he said,

"You must be tired from your long drive, why don't you go take a bath and rest a little while I get Elena ready for bed."

In the bathroom, I found a freshly drawn bubble bath complete with candles, a rose, chocolate, fruit, and.... wait for it..... Chili's chips and salsa!!

What a guy I have! :)

It was a wonderful reunion and I'm so happy to be back together as a family! (Excuse all the mushy details, but its my blog, so you just have to deal with it. :) I want them recorded, so I can look back and always remember what my sweet husband did for me.)

Then, yesterday and today, we had a great time celebrating Pioneer Day, but those details/pictures will come in the next post. Now on to the real post...

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Over the last couple of weeks, and culminating in the events of yesterday, I have had some pretty powerful lessons on the Lord's timing. Of course, I have always believed that things will happen when they are supposed to - in the Lord's time. But, my faith in and understanding of this principle has recently increased dramatically.

Since Eric got laid off, things have gotten progressively more and more tight. Our savings have been slowly eaten away by the expenses of starting up a business, paying tuition, and daily living. Our business is doing well, but it has been a slow and expensive start-up, as the first year running a business usually is. Things kind of came to a head last week as we had many large bills staring us in the face with no way in sight to pay them - one of the biggest and scariest among them was paying back our short term loan for Eric's summer tuition.

Amazingly though, this week, money slowly started trickling in to cover things, one bill at a time. It was like we could take one step into the darkness and our way would be illuminated for that one step, but we couldn't see any further past it. I could tell we were being blessed. Two of Eric's old textbooks that we had been trying to sell for months and months both sold - teaching me about the wisdom of the Lord's timing. If they had sold earlier, like we had hoped, the money would have been used somewhere else where we could have gotten by without it. But, they sold precisely when we needed the help the most.

However, we still had the problem of the short term loan. I could not forsee any probable way of coming up with that huge lump sum on top of everything else we had left to pay. I prayed fervently that something would work out and afterwards, in spite of everything, I felt peace. As I thought and brainstormed after, I thought of the Civic. Many of you know that we have been trying to sell our Civic - for a while. It's been many months and we've been quite frustrated that (despite all my complaining) a really good car, with great gas mileage, at a decent price has taken so long to sell. Especially when a much more inferior car (our Malibu) sold within hours of being listed.

We had gotten the Civic in pristine condition and just parked it, so it would always be ready to be shown and to avoid adding more miles to it. But, as it turned out, it ended up being a huge blessing that we hadn't sold the Civic. For my drive up to camp, I had planned on taking our Escort. That plan changed when we found out about some problems the Escort had the week before I was supposed to leave - problems that we didn't have the money to fix. Since the Civic wasn't selling anyways and the Escort wouldn't make it up to camp (that and the fact that the Civic has cruise control, a working radio/cd player, and better gas mileage), we decided that I had to take the Civic. Again, another evidence of the wisdom of the Lord's timing. If we had sold the Civic when we wanted it to sell, my trip up to camp would have been nearly impossible. And as I think back, it was a lifesaver for us several other times while we were trying to get it to sell - we were able to loan it for a week to family who's car was in the shop, we were able to use it when our Escort was in the shop, etc.

So, back to Wednesday. I finished praying and thought of the Civic. Selling it would provide the money to pay off our loan. But, it would have to sell quick - within a week. Which seemed unlikely since it had been listed for months and months with no success. But, I was determined to do all I could, even if it might not be the solution. I went to the computer and relisted it. Wednesday night when Eric came home from work, he told me that someone wanted to buy our car! Not just look at it - buy it. Eric was supposed to meet him the next evening in Salt Lake.

Well, the next day, things didn't quite go as planned. Eric got off work late and then got stuck in traffic. All the while, the guy he's supposed to be meeting was freaking out because he needed to go to the bank to get a loan for the car before the bank closed. He was terrified that if he had to wait until Monday to get to the bank that we would have sold the car already. Right.... ;) And this was all before he had even seen the car! He said that unless it didn't run when he test drove it, that he wanted to buy it. Talk about a miracle! I prayed that everything would go well and work out in time - and it did! Eric met him in time and the guy test drove the car straight to the bank, where he got his loan and BOUGHT OUR CAR!!! It was amazing. Absolutely amazing. The timing of it all. I just can't believe it. We tried to sell that car for MONTHS and the. day. that we didn't need it anymore and I relisted it, someone called wanting to buy it before that had even seen it in person. It was truly a miracle! The Lord knew when it was the best time for us to sell the car and when it was right, it sold. Oh! It's just so amazing to me! Such a testimony to me - the Lord knows us and is aware of us and the circumstances in our lives. His ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts - neither is His timing always our timing. But, He knows! What wisdom there is in His timing! I know these may sound like silly, smallish circumstances compared to some things- but to us they were so huge. And big or small, we can always learn something and have our faith strengthened. There is nothing too small - the Lord's hand is in EVERYTHING. He is always aware of us and in His time, we will be blessed and our prayers will be answered.