God provides.

Well this weekend did not go how I imagined it would. Friday, Jake found out that there was a 2nd memorial being held for his grandma for their extended friends and family on Saturday in Tennessee. It was only going to be about a 4-hour drive from our house so he really wanted us to go, especially since he wasn't able to attend her March funeral in Oregon. So I took off work early on Friday, gave Bailey to some friends of ours to be watched, and we drove up to Dresden, TN. It was really nice to meet Jake's extended family (some of which he had never even met before) and they truly showed us the meaning of southern hospitality. We felt right at home and plan to go back and visit again now that we know we have family so close. But anyways, Friday and Saturday were just big whirlwinds.

We decided to drive home Saturday night because Jake hadn't been home in over a month and he really just wanted to relax at home. When we were ready to go, we were not so happily surprised to find that our car had a dead battery (or so it seemed). That was stressful not only because we were trying to go home but also because we knew that in just a week we would be driving that car (our only car) across the country to California. One of his relatives was able to give our car a jump and thankfully it started. We decided that we would try to drive straight home without stopping just to be safe. We made it home Saturday night and decided that we would deal with the car issue on Sunday.

When we got up Sunday morning and tried to start the car, it was dead again. It was a frustrating morning because we missed church, and all of our friends were gone at church so we had no way of getting into town to get a new battery. Finally around 4, one of our friends came over and jumped our car so we could take it into town (about 10 miles away). As we were leaving base, our car just completely died. It wouldn't even jump start anymore. So Jake and four random guys pushed the car back to our house where it sat dead in our driveway. Of course it was Sunday so there is no mechanic open. At this point, Jake and I were both completely stressed out. I had to be at work first thing Monday for an event and had no way to get there and he had so much do this week before we leave for our trip that he really didn't need to add this to his plate. There was also the money issue of having to get our car worked on. Yes, we have savings but we don't want to pull from it. We decided that we would take the money from the account we had set up to save for our new car that we are planning to get at the end of the summer and that we would just have to wait another month to get our new car (sad...). I was just really stressed about what we were going to do if the car couldn't be fixed... our plans to L.A. would have changed drastically.

Monday morning, my boss actually ended up driving an extra 20 miles to come get me for work, which was not ideal for her, but at least I was able to work. Jake had to call a tow truck to come get the car and take it into town. It turns out that the thing wrong with our car was not as serious as it seemed (thank goodness!) and they were able to fix in just an hour! It still ended up costing us about $400 though which was not great news.

If you have been reading this long story you are probably thinking by now "Okay Lindsay, what's the point here?" Well here it is... On Friday, Jake got some information that the Air Force had been accidentally taking some money out of his paycheck for the past few months and they told us that we would be getting a refund (a refund for money we didn't even know we had lost). Guess how much that money was that they refunded us? $400. Amazing! The point of my story is that God provides. When things went wrong, we prayed hard, and this time God gave us the most clear and obvious answer to our prayers.

The weekend was not relaxing in any way, shape, or form, but looking back I am glad to be done with it all and thankful that it all worked out.