God's grace when we flip out

I have been stuck up here in Canada working on a major steam generator replacement at a nuclear power plant on the coast of Lake Huron. The hours are long and the downtime is boring. As the job continues to stack up delays, I have pretty much stopped counting the days until I can get out of here.

Because of COVID restrictions, the churches here have very limited attendance, so I have been attending my home church online at eastsidepres.com. In some ways it makes me feel less isolated, and in other ways it makes me feel more isolated. I get to see familiar people, which helps, but I don't really have any contact with them, and that makes me feel alone.

The time I do spend with church has become critical to me. Worship, I have found, is almost as critical to a whole human existence as breathing. We were spiritually designed for group worship. It is part of what we will do for eternity.

That leads me to a week that could have either been a complete disaster or something entirely different.

The message in worship this particular week was about Lot, and it reminded me of several things. First was self-gratification and all the different ways we seek it out. My pastor, Mark Auffarth, made a point that really struck me. I have always thought of Lot mostly as a gutless compromiser. I hadn't thought as much about him as a man who simply wanted what he thought was best for himself.

Then the message rooted that in pride, which to me is the mother of all sins. Pride deceives us into further sin. In a sense, pride is there before we ever commit the next sin. It is the birth giver to sin.

Lastly, it reminded me of a blog post I wrote several years ago about patience.

You can read that here if you would like:
https://bobslaundryroom.blogspot.com/2015/12/patience.html

Patience is probably the virtue Lot needed and, in contrast, Abraham cultivated. Patience teaches us to trust God and to wait. It is the antidote to self-indulgence and pride.

Truly, I hate being gone from home. I especially hate being in Canada. But God has been very good to me this summer.

Like this past week.

Two weeks ago this coming Friday, the starter on my car failed. Fortunately, God guided me into buying a car for Mary with a manual transmission. Then, fortunately, she used her youngest-child charms to convince me to give her my nicer, newer, better car.

Because of that, the saga that started with a bad starter turned into a great lesson in patience and trust that I just really enjoyed to the core of my being.

Okay, I lied.

At the time, I hated every second of it.

Like I said, the starter quit. But I did have a manual transmission, so the old 2005 Mini Cooper could be bump started. Having the car in some kind of working order was an absolute necessity because I am working 6:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m., seven days a week. I need to sleep all day, and there was no possible way I could take the car somewhere to be fixed or fix it myself.

So I was good with bump starting the car twice a day for as long as necessary.

God was not going to get me by refusing to answer my prayer to hold this bucket of bolts together until I could get out of the hellhole known as Canada. If He wasn't going to perform His magic, I was going to endure it and find workarounds.

Then Sunday rolled around.

On my way into work, just as I was arriving, the speedometer blinked off and then came back on. That seemed rather odd.

My gut sank a little.

That night—actually Monday morning—I got off work a little early, around 6:00 a.m. My relief tech helped me push the car, we got it started, and I headed home.  I made it maybe three miles from the plant.

First all the gauges died.

Then the radio quit.

Then the headlights went out.

Then the engine quit.

Fortunately, I was able to get my relief to come pick me up and take me back to the plant. When the auto parts store opened at 9:00, I would go get a new battery. Many parts stores in the U.S. open at 7:00 a.m., so I was not particularly pleased about losing several hours of sleep.

My coworker drove me to the store, about 20 miles away, where I bought a new battery. I figured the battery was the problem because it was four years old, and with the starter failure I assumed it had finally been pushed over the edge.

Seriously, who would think the alternator—which only had about 40,000 miles on it since replacement—and the starter would die within days of each other?  I put the battery in and the car suddenly had plenty of juice, like there had never been a problem. We bump started it again, and I drove home with no trouble.

Fortunately, my apartment parking spot was on an incline. I could start the car without anyone pushing me. Let it roll a little, pop the clutch, and presto!  I drove back to work that night with the starter still not working, but everything else seemed fine.

Tuesday morning we really didn't have anything to do, so I left work at about 3:00 a.m.  This time I drove for about 30 minutes.  Then the gauges died.  Then the headlights went out.  Then I rolled to a stop on the side of the road.  Except this time I was too far away to get help. My relief wouldn't even be out of bed until 5:30.

Rural Ontario is the definition of rural. There is no Uber. No Lyft. No taxis. I was too far from anything to walk anywhere. Nothing is open in the middle of the night. Even the wreckers basically have to be called and woken up by the police.

I was stuck.

And that was when I flipped out.

I reached my breaking point. My desire for self-gratification broke loose and I dumped a stream of bitter epithets at God that I am ashamed of now.  I even called Melanie, woke her up, and told her I had no idea why I believed in someone as useless to me as God.  What was the point of these decades of self-brainwashing that there was some Spirit up there who was actually interested in me?  From my vantage point at that moment, sitting on the side of the road and wallowing in unanswered prayers, it certainly didn't seem like any of it could possibly be true.

Then this came to my mind:

"This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. It is of the Lord's mercy that we are not consumed. Great is His faithfulness. His mercies are new every morning."

I asked God for forgiveness and waited for daylight.

After the sun came up, I started thinking that maybe, with everything electrical turned off, the engine wouldn't need much power to keep running. It really only needed enough electricity to make sparks and keep the computer alive.

I also happened to be sitting on a slight downhill.  The downhill was in the wrong direction, but a car will bump start in reverse too.  So I tried it. The car started.  And it ran well enough for me to drive all the way back to my apartment.

I called the local garage. The owner told me he had three or four days of work piled up ahead of me, which was definitely not what I wanted to hear.  I asked if he rented cars or knew of a rental agency because our project was critically behind schedule and everyone being at work was critically important.  He told me there were no rental cars in Wingham. He rented cars himself, but he was the only one in town who did, and all of his were out.  So I braced myself to call work and tell them I might be missing a few days.

Then the garage called me back.  They gave me the number for Enterprise Rent-A-Car in Listowel, about 35–40 minutes away. I called.  No answer.

I had already searched all over for a rental agency and this place had never even shown up. The agencies I had found didn't have cars.  For whatever reason, I decided to look up Enterprise's website.  There it was.  I reserved a car.

The tension eased a little.

I called Melanie again and confessed my impatience, my lack of trust, and my horrible venting in anger. I had simply lost my marbles for a while.  There is a lot of stress involved in working 12 hours a day, seven days a week, in a foreign country that is still in pandemic lockdown.  But I was beginning to turn around. I was beginning to repent, trust, and wait.

Next I took the Mini straight down to the repair shop to make sure I got on their list. I mentioned that all I really needed now was some way to get to Listowel to pick up the rental car.  They immediately offered to drive me.  They couldn't do it until 11:30 a.m., but they would take me.

By this time it was 8:30 in the morning. I had been awake since 2:30 the previous day after having slept only about three hours because of Monday's fiasco.  I rushed back to the apartment—a ten-minute walk—and thought maybe I could sleep until 11:15.  Some sleep is better than none.

I managed about 30 minutes.

I was so paranoid about oversleeping and missing this incredibly gracious ride to Listowel that I couldn't sleep any more, even though I was exhausted.  At this point I had that jittery, overtired feeling and probably wasn't making the best judgment calls.

The man from the garage who drove me turned out to be a fellow Presbyterian by heritage, and we had a nice conversation on the way to Listowel.

Then Enterprise called.  They didn't actually have a car.  I begged.  The agent had mercy on me and said he would check around.  A few minutes later he called back. Enterprise was going to have a car delivered from Toronto.  It would be mid-afternoon before it arrived.

Since I already had the ride and was halfway there, I really didn't have any choice except to be dropped off in town and wait.  The driver dropped me on Main Street in Listowel, about half a mile from the rental agency.  I walked about a quarter mile to Tim Hortons and went inside to get a cup of coffee.

Then I discovered Ontario's new rule that restaurants couldn't allow people inside without proof of vaccination. I was vaccinated, but of course I didn't have my CDC card with me.  Regardless of what I thought about the rule, what it meant for me at that moment was simple:

I was completely exhausted and couldn't even sit down.  It had rained, so everything outside was wet.  But by this point I had changed.  Instead of raging about it, I was leaning on God.

I can do this with Your help.

I will trust You. I will be patient.  Let's see where this goes.

Honestly, I had to wait anyway, so what exactly was I accomplishing by having an attitude about it?

Eventually I made my way to the rental agency and discovered that it was housed inside a body shop. Fortunately, the body shop had several waiting areas, and one of them was fairly private.  At 2:00 the agent told me the car had supposedly left Toronto an hour earlier and should arrive within the hour.

I managed another 30 minutes of sleep.  Then it turned out somebody had given the agent bad information.  The car didn't arrive until 4:30 p.m.  By the time I finished the paperwork, it was 5:00.  I had been awake for most of 26 hours.  I had to be back at work in an hour and a half.  And I was an hour and a half away from work.  So off I went.

When I got there, I was blessed with a slow night.

I pulled the night-shift manager aside and told him I probably shouldn't even be there. I had been awake for about 28 hours and was pretty clearly entering "Not Fit for Duty" territory.

In the nuclear world that is serious. Nuclear components, other people, and I could all be endangered by me trying to work while severely sleep deprived.  He told me there wouldn't be any activity for several hours and he would be more than happy if I went out to my car and slept. He would come get me when they needed me.  I got about two blissful hours.

Afterward I climbed out of my nice Honda Civic—which felt like a luxury car compared with that old Mini Cooper—and walked back into the office trailer.  There, sitting on my desk, was a huge, freshly made burrito.

When you are that sleep deprived, some high-energy food is better than coffee.  One of the machinist techs had gone out for food and bought burritos for everybody.  I hadn't even thought about eating.  But God had.

In the end, the shift ran all the way to the scheduled finish and I didn't leave until 7:00 a.m.  That put my total sleep over roughly the previous 48–50 hours at about four hours.  I headed home and, amazingly, didn't even get groggy on the drive.  I made it to my apartment, fell into bed, and finally slept.

Then the car repair went remarkably well.  Because of all the supply shortages during the pandemic, garages were having trouble getting parts. Oddly enough, that ended up working in my favor.

For one thing, my alternator wasn't bad at all.  There was simply a loose wire on the back of it.  Then several cars ahead of mine had repairs delayed because the shop couldn't get their parts for several days.

Meanwhile, they were able to find my starter in a nearby town.  My repair got moved up by two days.

By the time I am writing this, everything is back in order.  My last major concern was how I was going to drop off the rental car and then get all the way back to my new apartment, which is an hour and fifteen minutes from the rental agency.

Oh yeah.  I forgot to mention that in the middle of this entire fiasco, I was also moving.  My lease on the old apartment was ending, and I had already planned to move into another place much closer to work.  The new apartment also costs me about $1,600 CAD less per month.  God was really good in allowing me to find it.

The Icing on the cake was that the rental agent was more than happy to drive me all the way from Listlowel to Wickham for free!

So what is the moral of this ridiculously long story?

God will regularly give you and me more than we can bear. He doesn't want or need self-sufficient, perfect people.

Why would people with no needs need God?

How would we know joy without pain?

Jesus came to save sinners. He came to help His people whose sin problems are far greater than they have any concept of being able to handle on their own.

Sometimes He allows people to struggle their entire lives with sin, fear, trust, or any number of other things.  He helps us by not allowing our lives to be perfect.  Sometimes He helps us by bringing troubles that overwhelm us and force us to seek Him.

Yes, someone could look at something as small as a car breaking down in a foreign country during a pandemic—when I don't know anybody and don't even know where to go for help—and say it is pretty clear that God doesn't exist. Or, if He does, He doesn't give a rat's butt about the things we are concerned about.

In the heat of trouble, I can be inclined to agree.  That's another failing God is helping me with.  Because it is very far from the truth. 

Looking back on everything that happened, here is what I believe God did for me.

• He taught me that my plans are subject to His plans.
• I don't control anything. He does.
• He gave me a place to bump start my car when I was alone.
• He gave me help when I really had to have it.
• He brought Scripture to my mind when I most needed it and was completely flipped out.
• He gave me a wife who will listen to my almost incoherent raging and wait for me to come back to my senses.
• He taught me to rely on one of the greatest virtues there is: Patience.
• He brought me to an honest repair shop where people went out of their way to help me, including driving me 40 minutes to another town without charging me a dime.
• He fed me when I hadn't even remembered that I needed food.
• He gave me a rental-car agent willing to go out of his way to find me a car when they were sold out.
• He lined up the parts and repairs so my car was finished in just a few days.
• Through all of this, He blocked me from being self-gratified and able to handle everything myself.
• He struck down my independence and taught me to relax, wait, and trust.

Maybe you think all of this could happen to anybody whether they believe in God or not.  I totally agree.  It happens every day.  God makes the sun shine on everyone's fields and sends rain to water the ground for everyone, not just the people who prayed for it.

The difference is that the things God does every day to care for His creation are easily ignored—or completely hidden from those who don't believe.

So, strangely enough, this was one of my more blessed weeks.

A really good week, all in all.