The Junk Yard

November 7, 2011

From my mother – Miriam Peterson. This is just wonderful!

Last night, at Ann Boswell’s house, I held hands with 7 other of God’s children while we prayed together for the healing of Camille’s body, her anger, and attitude,  Specifically we prayed that the Prince of Peace and Joy would call Camille into a relationship with Himself, revealing His nature and purposes through her.

Because I believe that God hears our prayers I intentionally went to Roswell to spend the day with Camille, to see what He would do.  The day itself was one of those rare, early November days where the temperature reaches a perfect 72 degrees, the air is dry and the sun is bright all day.  The trees were ablaze with color.  Everywhere you looked were deep reds, brilliant yellows and a thousand colors in between.  It was like moving through living art, an artist’s delight.

My itinerary included lunch along the way and maybe a drive up Ga. 400 to Dahlonega to enjoy the trees.  That is not what happened.  After a stop at Camille’s favorite Thrift store and lunch at Olive Garden, we started up Ga. 400.  Camille was starting to complain, about the traffic, the noise.  She was not enjoying herself.  I decided to plow ahead with my itinerary and went out onto North 400.  As I picked up speed, we both noticed the wind rushing through the sunroof.  Was it open?  A quick check revealed that the sun roof was shattered in her car!  Now that is just weird.  The car had not been driven in over 2 weeks and is seldom driven more than 2 blocks to the drug store.  As I tried to decide what to do, a large chunk of the glass turned loose and flew behind us, who knows where.  Fall trip to Dahlonega canceled, I started a slow trip back to her house.

Back to my real purpose in being there, and since the sunroof is the most heavenward part of her car, I paid close attention to her attitude about this more or less serious problem.  I noticed that she was surprisingly light hearted (mostly puzzled.).  That’s very different from her typical response to life’s irritating problems.  Typically she lashes out in anger with a stream of obscenities, blaming just about anyone that comes to mind.

We eased our way back home, made several phone calls and learned that she had a $1000 deductible on comprehensive insurance, so no help there.  She had just received a completely unexpected check from Social Security for a little over $1000 (some sort of catch up thing – the letter was very vague).  The dealer wanted $820 for a new sunroof and that did not include installation.  We both thought that the money would certainly now have to be spent on the sunroof.  “I can never get ahead”, she grumbled in typical negative fashion.  I thought, “Thank you Lord for sending her the money to pay for this even before we knew what it was for!”  Praise leaped up from heart for I have seen His kindness in her life too many times to count.  More calls were made involving 2 Christian brothers (Dr. Rob, her long time friend and a precious Christian and her nephew Tim, my son).  My son said we could bring the car to him, then go to a junk yard and buy the replace unit for $75 (he’d been calling around too).

Well this day certainly was not going the way I had planned.  I wasn’t even going to be around my sister for most of it.  But off I went, trying to get something done before night and the promise of rain, the next day.  I was concerned driving across Marietta and Roswell in busy traffic with the potential of pieces of glass blowing out as had happened earlier.  I went slow and kept repeating the promise “nothing can hinder You, Oh Lord.  Your will be done.”  I picked up Tim and we drove to a remote junk yard in Austell.  Tim explained to me as we drove along how the area we were in was flooded a couple of years ago.  Many houses were still boarded up.  I prayed again in the back of my mind “Nothing can hinder You, Oh Lord.  Thy will be done in the families that lived here and in mine.”

The sun was dropping fast.  It was the first business day of the autumn time change.  Everything seemed later that it actually was.

The visit to the junk yard was a first for me.  I thought the parts would be on the shelf or something.  That’s not the way it works.  They tell you about where to start looking out on the lot.  You have to find the wreck, measure the part and see if it will work for you.  Together with Tim, we crawled over wrecked cars.  When I was getting dressed earlier that day, I had been led to wear jeans and a work shirt of my husbands – I had no idea why.  I had planned a girl’s outing. Now I knew why I was appropriately dressed for the junk yard.  The shadows grew longer and longer as we search through wrecked cars stacked 2 and 3 high.  There was no isle through many of them so we climbed over bumpers and squeezed through little gaps.  My mind returned to prayer.  Was this a living metaphor?  A picture of how God sees us – useless for what He made us for, damaged beyond repair, waiting silently and in large numbers to be crushed and burned, turned back into the dust from which He made us?

“I found it!” Tim shouted, “Over here!”  I couldn’t see where he was but I crawled over what was left of a car couple of cars until I finally saw him.   Smiling in victory, he banged on the trunk of a miserable looking wrecked Lincoln.  He hurried off to inform someone back up at the shop and I decided to stand and keep guard over this newly found “treasure” – “the sheep that was lost” I mused.  This one or part of it can be used, I thought.

I wasn’t expecting what happened next.  A huge fork lift, bull dozer thingy came over and starting grabbing up all the cars in the line that contained “my treasure!”  Oh no! I thought and I tried to shoo the driver away.  I frantically mouthed up at him “no!  I want this one!”  He acknowledged me with a silent nod from his powerful perch, inside the giant fork lift thingy.  When he roughly grabbed up “my” wrecked Lincoln with the fork lift, I had to back away.  I had to let it go – into his hands.  I thought all was lost.”  It was only later that I found out that the driver of that big thingy was the owner of the junk yard and he knew exactly what he was doing.  Our heavenly “owner” does too, I thought.

Within seconds “my” junked Lincoln was delivered to the “surgeon” for sun roof removal.  A young man that looked and acted like a monkey leaped into the wrecked car and started ripping out the headliner.  I stood amazed, watching this grease covered, small thin man with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, sporting a very long, curly, grown out Mohawk hair do, jerk and prod until the headliner gave way, exposing the entire sunroof apparatus.

Lord, I know you hear and answer prayers, I thought, but this is an encounter I wasn’t expecting.

Tim stepped over and said “mom, aren’t you glad God made people like him who not only can do this sort of work, but seem to enjoy it?”  I looked at him again and smiled.  I complimented him on his abilities.  He stuck his head out of the wreck and beamed a smile at me.  He had the most beautiful blue eyes.  They literally danced when we spoke.  He proudly told me he could drop a motor out of a car just as fast as he could remove a sunroof.  He was truly a junk car expert.  Oh, the story doesn’t end there.  God’s blessings never end.

Tim and I took the junk yard retrieved sun roof unit to an installer in Marietta.  The installer had been looking for a wheel repair shop – which is exactly what Tim’s company specializes is.  The owner said he’d be sending Tim a lot of business (which he really needs as a small business owner in these “economic downturn” days.)

On the drive to Camille’s house for my car, Tim and I had a wonderful discussion about God’s Biblical promises.  ALL things are under His Sovereign control.  Together we tried to understand how sin and suffering fit into God’s Sovereign control of All things.  Tim said he had learned that to every theological truth, there is a ledge, a precipice.  And that we can move through human knowledge and reason just so far out onto this razor sharp ledge and then… Beyond that edge of human understand lays the unfathomable depth of the mind and heart of God.  We concluded that though we cannot fully understand what ALL things mean, we can fully trust God’s character, His abiding, hovering presence in ALL things.  We can commit ALL things to Him, including sunroofs and sisters.

When we reached Camille’s home, we decided to go out to dinner.  It was well after dark, but Camille was upbeat and thankful for the help.  I noticed she kept a tight lid on the foul language and combative, angry attitude that so often characterizes her.

Did God heal her?  Time will tell.  Did God answer our prayers – Oh yes!  He heard, He responded, He loves us and ALL of the dilapidated junks in His earthly junk yard.  Oh yes, He answered, but almost never as I thought He might.