Tender Mercies

Psalms 69:16

Hear me, O Lord; for thy lovingkindness is good:

turn unto me according to the multitude of thy tender mercies.

For a while I've been thinking about some miraculous things that have happened in our family that, for me, were definitely "tender mercies" from the Lord. While honestly, there are almost too many to name, these are a few I'd like to share:

--January 2011 my mom and I were driving back to Colorado after our van had the engined replaced--twice--and was running again (that was another miracle in and of itself). We had the three kids and a fully packed van with all of our things we'd lived with the last two months, plus Christmas stuff. We could barely see the kids and stuff was packed to the ceiling of the van. We had hit a snowstorm almost as soon as we crossed into Wyoming. Nothing blinding, but constant with high winds. A couple of times it blew our top luggage container open and we had to pull over to shut it again.

Just as we were approaching Laramie, a semi in front of us suddenly put on their brakes.  My mom was driving and she switched lanes and just barely tapped the brake as we moved over. It was enough to send us fish tailing. My mom lost control of the van and after a few seconds of sliding over the freeway, we spun into the median, doing at least two full revolutions in the snow that blinded the windshield until we skidded to a stop.  I honestly wouldn't have even known which side of the freeway we were on except I could see a faint glow of the Laramie lights in the direction we'd been heading. 

We were blessed we didn't hit a metal reflector as we skidded of the road that dotted the median every 50 yards or so; we were also fortunate the median wasn't steep, or we would have rolled. Shaken and stuck, I told my mom I would get out and push as she tried to get us back onto the freeway.

As I pushed and my mom gently hit the gas, we just kept sliding back and forth for a few minutes. My mom wanted to give up and wait for help, but I wanted to try again. This time it worked--we kept sliding but made progress until we were on solid gravel again. We slowly entered the freeway again. As my mom tried to accelerate, we made a surprising discovery--that the car was in second gear. My mom had not switched gears earlier, and we didn't know how it happened. My mom concluded that an angel must have switched it after we were having trouble, and that's what made the difference in us getting out of the median and being able to continue on our way.

--A few months later Tyson and the kids and I were driving along a mountainside at night. I was driving, and Tyson had reached over and hit the cruise control when I'd hit the speed limit. Suddenly I had a very distinct impression that if I didn't slow down, we'd hit a deer. I turned off the cruise control and decreased my speed by 5 miles per hour. I'm sure this irked the driver behind us, who was already tailing us very closely.

Just a few minutes later, I came over a hill just in time to see a string of no less than eight deer just finish crossing the road. I was able to slow down enough without slamming on the brakes just in time for the last one to finish crossing. If we'd come over that hill, say 20-40 seconds earlier, I'm sure we would have hit at least one of the deer that would have been strung across the road--and we probably would have been hit from behind from the tailgater as well.  

--When we lived in Boulder, the gas oven that came with our trailer was extremely old--I'm guessing it was from the '70's, so it was pushing 40 years. You had to light several of the burners by hand (think "Beasts of the Southern Wild"), and the oven often took a while to light, and we could smell gas while waiting for it to light. On top of all of that, the outside of the oven door became extremely hot when in use, so hot that once Jacob leaned on it for just a moment and burned his hand. It really needed to be replaced, but it was difficult at the time to come up with the funds to do it.

At one point we had worked out a way that we were going to get a new, cheap oven through someone in the community--and the week it was all supposed to be worked out, I received a phone call Tuesday morning that it fell through. We were really disappointed, but prepared to bite the bullet and figure out how to do it on our own.

That same Tuesday I received another call from a neighbor in our ward. I had called her a couple of days earlier, and she was just returning my call. We chatted about the ward, family, her chickens, when suddenly out of nowhere she asked, "I know this is really random, but by any chance to you need an oven?" I was stunned. "Actually, yes." Their family had come by a great deal on a brand new oven, and they were getting rid of their still-in-good-use, much-newer-than-ours oven.

It still surprises me when I think about it, how random it all was (that's the only time in my life I've been asked if I needed an oven!), how perfect the timing was. If she'd called the day before, I would have told her no. The fact that she thought of the oven while we were talking, and asked. It was a small miracle.

--I realize that most of our "tender mercies" revolve around car incidences, but when you have a lot of problems with your car, Heavenly Father has a lot of opportunities ;) After we had already replaced the engine twice that one winter, we were headed out of state for an awesome Spring Break Vacation. 80 miles out, just before we hit the state line, we heard an awful noise coming from our car and lost significant power, but we were able to turn around and drive home going 30 mph. 

When we arrived back, we drove straight to a mechanic who told us the engine had broken a rod and was once again dead. He advised us not to try to drive the 1.5 miles home, as the rod could fall and fully stop the engine. When we informed him we'd just come 80 miles already, he was stunned. We were so blessed it didn't happen out of state, and that it broke but in such a way that we made it back home, as we had no means of being able to tow it or fix it at that time. We were able to park it in our driveway for two more months until Tyson finished the semester and had the time--once again--to replace the engine. 

--After our last paycheck of May 2012 when we left Colorado, we had some savings to live on, but no steady income. We were able to get some work and cover our expenses while we lived with my parents for a while. However, after moving to Idaho in January, our expenses shot up--rent, the highest utility bills we'd ever had in zero degree weather, and tuition with no financial assistance whatsoever (no loans, scholarships, grants, etc.)--and we needed to figure out how we were going to get a solid income. 

I'm still surprised we made it as long as we did. I didn't think we could last past April without getting a job. Somehow, we did. And finally, after another small series of miracles, I landed a competitive job working at the hospital a mere 3-4 minute drive away exactly the nursing area I wanted to be in. When I finally got my first paycheck just before July--I won't use an exact number, but we had less money to our names than most people spend going out to a restaurant for dinner. It was perfect timing. 

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I'm just so grateful to our Heavenly Father who knows not only what we need, but when we need it, even more than we do. I'm thankful He pushes us just long enough to increase our faith, longer than we think we can so we learn what we are really capable of. I'm thankful that we've lived with less in many areas so Heavenly Father could make up the difference. If we didn't have needs, we wouldn't need miracles. I'm also so grateful for Tyson, who makes sure that that we have a storage of faith more than we have of material goods.

God is Great.