We woke up at 5 that morning to begin preparing–packing bags, feeding a very hungry little mouth, loading up the car–to be on our way at 7am. After two and a half weeks visiting my husband’s parents in Ohio, we were ready to begin the trip home to North Carolina, but we were making a stop in Virginia to visit more family first. The night before, we had called and told them to expect us for dinner.
Finally, the car was packed, goodbyes were said, and we had settled in for the nine hour drive. Finally, we were on our way!
Our burnt orange Chevy Cobalt turned out of the city onto country roads as my husband and I reflected on the time with family and our little boy began snoozing in the back seat. The sun peaked through the trees and the morning light left the snow glowing. Praise God we were finally on our way!
And then without my husband touching the brakes at all, the car slowed down to a near stop. A message on our dashboard flashed engine power reduced as we inched slowly up the hill towards the stop sign, and regardless of my husband pushing the accelerator to the floor, we couldn’t go more than 20mph.
Well, darn it.
Our little car had taken us 100 hours from California to North Carolina and everywhere in between when we PCSed across the country two years ago. It had taken us 80,000 miles with every quirk imaginable but never a major issue. It had seen a new baby, countless 500+ mile road trips, and our first three years of marriage. It’s burnt orange exterior ensured I never had to remember where we parked.
We only had one car.
I loved that car.
But going a maximum for 20mph on a 600 mile trip is hardly ideal, so we turned around and headed to the nearest garage. Those next three miles were a mix of fearing for our lives as we hit busier city streets and could only go half the speed limit, a lot of waiting as our car slowed to a measly 3mph on hills, and incessant honking from the impatient drivers around us. My husband was stressed out of his mind thinking about how we were going to get home while trying to keep up alive in our barely functional car and I was laughing because it really was a comical situation.
Eventually, we did make it to the garage…where we were told they couldn’t see us for another week, so our car did its best snail impersonation another mile down the road and my father-in-law came to pick my son and myself up and my husband stayed behind to try to figure out what the heck was going on.
An hour and a half after saying our goodbyes, we walked back through the door of my in-laws house and my son, thrilled to be back, started playing with Grandma while I began making phone calls. It wasn’t long before my husband called to inform us that our car needed a new engine.
And it was going to cost about $400 in labor and $3,900 for an engine that already had 100,000 miles on it, plus it wouldn’t be done for five days.
Basically what happened is that the extreme cold had caused something in our engine to crack and the fuel and coolant had mixed and effectively destroyed our engine. I believe the word “decimated” might have even been used, and the car was so useless at that point the garage wouldn’t even take it. Perhaps the most frustrating part of the whole thing is that a few days prior our car had been 100% functional and all it took was negative temperatures to utterly destroy it.
There wasn’t too much thinking to do after that–our car was worth less than half of what a used engine would cost and we had been praying God would provide us with a new vehicle for weeks. However, my husband and I had decided we would not purchase a new vehicle until we could do so in cash, and while we had a plan to get there we weren’t going to be able to start looking for another year and a half.
One evening we had asked our family to pray that God would provide us with a new vehicle and my father-in-law prayed God would give us wisdom in buying a new vehicle.
No, no, no, no, noooooo–we were nowhere near buying a new vehicle. We couldn’t afford a new vehicle. We were praying God would give us a new vehicle. People giving away cars they no longer need is not uncommon and we were praying one of those families would find us.
God has a sense of humor, as He reminds me every so often, and we were about to buy a new vehicle. That day. In the next few hours so we could continue on our way to Virginia.
There were two options: buy the cheapest car we could possibly find so we could pay in cash or get a reliable car and take out a loan which meant going into debt. We decided it would be wiser to invest in a car that would last us more than a year or two even though the thought of adding full coverage insurance and a car payment to our already ginormous list of bills made me want to cry.
Then, as usual, God made it happen. My husband’s parents gave us an amazingly generous gift, we received a phone call from the family we were on our way to visit in Virginia and they wanted to give us an incredible late Christmas gift, and thankfully we had some money in savings. The three amounts together would be exactly what we needed to buy a car that would last us multiple children and stand up to the often 100 miles of driving we do every day in very spread out North Carolina.
Our grandpa called and told us he had a trusted friend who worked at a dealership and wanted to help, so we headed over and began the search. Most of the cars available in our price range were nice but they had 130,000+ miles which is far too many when you’re putting 50,000 miles a year on a car and don’t want it to splutter out and die in two years. We searched through their database for all sorts of options and finally found one that was listed 25% above our price range without taxes and fees but was a good model and had low mileage on it, and the salesman helping us assured us that he could get it into our price range. Hubby took it out for a long test drive and determined it to be great so the salesman negotiated the price down to exactly our budget to the dollar and we paid for it then and there in literal cash.
By 1pm we were driving out of the dealership to go pick up our son and the bags and continue on our trip. We arrived in Virginia just after midnight.
I look at situations like the one we were in and I am stunned by how God works the timing out perfectly. Our car could have stopped working in the middle of the snowy mountains, leaving us freezing and with all of our stuff from three weeks of traveling with no way to get home. We would have spent all our savings on a tow truck and a rental instead of putting it towards buying a new vehicle. Our car could have died when we had exactly 20 hours for my husband to get home and check in from leave, which is usually how we do these trips. Instead we had a three day buffer because we had planned to stop by and see family on the way home. We were only 20 minutes away from our parents, our engine had enough power to make it to two garages, and God worked out the finances. The family we were going to visit in Virginia is an extremely generous couple who wouldn’t have known about our situation at all had we not been in the car on the way to see them at the moment our car died. Then we had other family who offered to lend us a car if we couldn’t buy one immediately and more who were knowledgeable about vehicles and helped us search.
Because of all that, there were no extra costs, no loans, no waiting on the side of a freezing highway with nowhere to go. Instead there was just the reminder that God loves us and our family loves us, and as both families who helped us pay for our car pointed out, “All the money comes from God, anyway.”
God certainly has a sense of humor, and He reminds me over and over again that when we make plans we need to be loose-fisted with them. It’s often last minute but He always, always, always provides. We are now the proud new owners of a black 2008 Chevy Impala with low mileage and all these snazzy bells and whistles like heated leather seats that make me feel like I peed myself every time I turn them on, and I wish I had had a chance to say goodbye to my ugly orange first car, but really all I can think about is how thankful I am.
Now I need to adjust to remembering where I parked since our new black car isn’t quite as conspicuous as our burnt orange one. All in God’s timing…
***All these pictures are of our old car, my beloved 2006 Chevy Cobalt. Why has this post taken me almost three weeks to publish? Because I was waiting to add pictures of our new car and hadn’t taken a single one. Not one. And I still don’t have even more, because every time I think about it my husband has the car and he’s at work. Sorry, friends!