Previous Challenge Entry (Level 2 – Intermediate)
Topic: End (02/13/06)
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TITLE: The Dead End Day | Previous Challenge Entry
By Betsy Tacchella
02/18/06 -
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Occasionally in life there is what I call a dead end day. This is a day when everything seems to go wrong. Yet these kinds of days can have a redeeming aspect.
It was a Saturday morning. Mike, my grade school son, needed an adapter for his children’s computer so we looked in five local stores and called four more but no one had just what we were looking for. Frustrated we decided to head to Kalamazoo, an hours drive away, to find the part.
“Let’s take in a movie and dinner while we’re up there,” I said, trying to add a little cheer to our day.
“Sounds great, mom…let’s go.”
Before we left, I stopped in town to check out some shoes I’d been wanting. “I’m sorry,” the clerk lamented. “I just sold the last pair in your size fifteen minutes ago.”
“Ok, Mike, let’s stop and get a paper before we leave so we can check out the movies in Kalamazoo first.”
“The paper won’t be in for a couple more hours,” remarked the clerk.
Off we went to Kalamazoo. The weather report was for cloudy and possibly a few snow flurries. Didn’t sound too threatening. By the time we reached Kalamazoo, we were in a major snow storm. My husband, Bill, was out of the country for the week so we had his car, which doesn’t do well in snow. In fact he’d asked me not to drive his car in the snow while he was gone. But there we were, slipping and sliding.
“I think I’ll stop at the Bible book store and pick up two books while we’re here, Mike.”
They didn’t have either one. So we went across the road to look for Mike’s adapter. They didn’t have what we wanted.
By now the snow looked serious. “Mike, I think we better head on home.”
“Yes, I agree, mom. The snow is really coming down and building up on the road.”
We slowly crept home. It was scary and I cried much of the way. At one point the ice had built up so much on the wipers, I couldn’t see at all.
“We’d better pull off the road and scrape the ice off the wipers,” I said as I looked for a place to pull off.
There was nowhere to pull off the road. Finally I spotted a side road. I began to slow down and ended up sliding sideways, just scooting off the highway. Outside, I picked all the ice off the wipers. As I scraped the passenger side wiper, half the rubber also came off with the ice. So the wiper just scraped across the windshield leaving a constant blur.
By now Mike and I were fervently praying.
“Mom,” Mike spoke tentatively, “do you think the prayer is working?”
“It must be. We haven’t crashed yet, Mike.”
We made it home, a bit shaky, but home at last. Walking in the door, I found a note from Rhonda, a young friend who lived with us. “Bill called while you were gone and says he loves you.”
I began to laugh. I had missed his call from Germany. We had agreed that he’d call only two times and that was the second.
“Lord, what is this?”
Mike and I had our “night out” at a local restaurant and took in a cute Disney movie. As I tucked Mike into bed that night, I said, “Mike, this is a good day to reflect and thank God for His blessings even though most of the day has been filled with one dead end disaster after another.”
Back and forth we prayed thanking God for guiding us safely home, thanking Him for Bill’s good phone report, and that we’d found a cute movie to attend.
“Mike, even on the worst days, there are things to be thankful for.”
But the crowning blow came the next day, Sunday morning. As I walked into church, a friend of Bill’s looked me square in the eyes and with all seriousness said, “I want you to know I’ve really been praying for you this week with Bill gone.”
My first thought was, Oh, please, don’t pray anymore. Please! But then I thought, Well maybe things would have been worse.
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Very real and believable. I can certainly identify!!