Sweet Little Tender Mercies

Our van has been giving us a bit of trouble since Saturday.  When you move to shift it out of park, sometimes it gets stuck.  Twisting the steering wheel doesn't unlock it, nor does lifting on the brake.  Turning it on and off only works sometimes, and sometimes pumping the brake works.  We never know what to expect.  The upshot is, we need to take it to the mechanic.

But we haven't yet, and today I was at Costco with Hebs and Yummy.  We had finished our shopping with twenty minutes to spare before Gee got out of kindergarten.  Plenty of time...so I thought.

It wasn't until I went to shift into reverse that I remember that this might be a problem.  The gear shift wouldn't work.  I tried everything that we had tried this weekend, but with no success.  The minutes ticked by.  Trying everything again, I called Bradley at work for advice.  He had none beyond what I was already doing. 

It was now twelve minutes until kindergarten got out.  Mema is at my sister's today, helping her, so I couldn't call and ask Grandma to pick up Gee.  I'm finally getting to know people in the ward, though, and thankfully I knew of at least one mom who could pick up Gee with her son.  Before I gave her a call, though, I decided to try one last thing (although it probably should have been my first effort):  Pray.

I told Hebs (who was confused as to why I wasn't going anywhere) that we were going to pray to Heavenly Father to help us.  He asked, "What good will that do?"

Oy.  Clearly there are some theological gaps in his current understanding.

I explained that we should always ask God for help.  Sometimes He will answer our prayers the way we want, sometimes not, but we should always ask.  I then asked if Hebs would pray with me.  He agree to close his eyes, but didn't want to fold his arms.  Fair enough.

As soon as my short prayer was over, I tried to move the gear shift.  It immediately moved smoothly into reverse.

On the way home--and we weren't late picking Gee up--Hebs and I had a nice conversation about how the Lord loves to bless us.  It's hard to know how much a four-year-old can understand, but I'm grateful to the Lord for getting us moving again, and teaching my Hebs a good little lesson in the process.