I'm not sure whether I wrote about my goals for 2015 at the start of last year or not. But I really had one goal. I had decided to start a gratitude journal to write down at least 5 things that I was grateful for or 5 ways that I saw God working in my life. each day. I had been doing a lot of learning about gratitude and awareness of God's presence and provision in our lives, 0and wanted to have a place where I could go to not only be intentional about recording it, but to be able to reflect on those days that I couldn't see it quite as clearly. It was a wonderful exercise. I wasn't perfect about writing it down every day, but I did find that I was so much more aware simply because I was looking for things to be thankful for.
I mention this because I ended 2015 with not the happiest of days. On Wednesday, December 30th, I was headed north on Route 15 to go to Walmart (we needed Drano for our downstairs sink, which I fear Mara had clogged by washing her Baby Alive food dishes in it) and to stop at Subway for a sandwich for lunch. There was nothing out of the ordinary going on. I reached down to grab a drink of water from my water bottle, and before I knew it, I looked up and realized that I was about to hit the car in front of me. Traffic had stopped ahead of us, and just like that, there was nothing I could do. I should note that, although there have been plenty of times that I have been distracted in the car while I'm driving, this was not one of those times. I simply looked away for a split second. But a split second was all it took. The damage to the second vehicle was far worse-- and the glass that is everywhere in my picture is from that vehicle, whose back windshield had totally shattered.
I found it ironic that, although I'm the first person people call when these kinds of things happen to them in terms of my profession, it is still a pretty jarring thing to have happen to you. I was horribly concerned about the woman and her passenger that I had hit. Everyone seemed to be completely fine, but I just felt awful about the whole thing. But here is where my mind quickly went to all the ways that God was providing even through something horrible that had happened.
- Wednesday was scheduled to be the day that I had Mara with me to get her hair cut. But on Wednesday morning, our hairdresser had sent me a text to let me know that she wasn't feeling very well, and asked to reschedule. Had this not happened, Mara would have been in the car with me. And I would have been a wreck about that.
- Because of my profession, I was able to keep a really calm head about me and I knew just what to do. We called the police right away, we had all of our information exchanged (she was also a State Farm customer, so I called her Agent and talked to them about what had happened), we even called State Farm claims from the scene of the accident to set up the claim so that she could get her vehicle repaired as quickly as possible.
- The woman who was driving the other car could not have been more gracious and forgiving. She acted exactly the way you would HOPE you would act if your day had been totally ruined like hers had been. She and her friend were visiting Lewisburg from Clearfield to do some antique shopping. I kept asking her if she would let me help her to tape up her back windshield or call for a rental car for her, etc. but she insisted that they would be fine (in 30 degree weather) to take the car back home to Clearfield for repairs. In fact, she said they would still be going shopping some more, and now that she wasn't limited by her back windshield, she could buy some larger sized items to take with her. She gave me a hug when she left, and told me to please not worry about any of this any more than I already had. She had every right to be nasty with me--- to make me really feel bad about what I had done. But she didn't. She showed grace and mercy and that was such a gift.
- Since I had glass on the vehicle, I wanted to get it looked at right away, so I took the car to Swartz Collision just south of Lewisburg. They are a shop that we probably deal with the most on customer claims and I never have any issues with them. As soon as I pulled up, they got to work cleaning glass off of the car and looking at it to write the damage estimate. When I asked how long it might be until we could schedule the repair, they said they were scheduling out till January 15th (ugh). But shortly after that, they came out to tell me that they weren't comfortable with me driving the car for that long because the hood wouldn't close properly and there was a headlight that was broken. And so, the Suburban was being admitted. Before I could blink, they had Enterprise there with a rental for me, and had removed all of my car seats and installed them in the rental mini van for me. And because my car is now considered a non driveable car, it just may bump me up a bit in terms of the priority of repairs. Which means I might have it back sooner. The rental car is brand new, and really nice, but I sure miss driving "my car".
- This is going to sound silly, but I have really started looking forward to the 5:00-5:30 half hour each day as I make my way home from the office. I hardly ever listen to anything but Sirius XM radio anymore, and the Family Talk channel is my absolute favorite. (I sometimes even listen to it online at the office.) But at 5:00, there is a pastor by the name of Mike Fabarez, who delivers the most spot-on sermons I have ever heard. He is a Bible teacher, and I really get a lot out of listening to him speak during that half hour, and I know God is using that time to teach me things that I need to know to be a better mother and wife and friend. The thought of being without that time for the next possibly 3 weeks was the worst of this whole thing to me. Imagine my surprise when I got into the rental car and found it tuned to Family Talk. But then again, why was I surprised?
So, there were my 5 grateful points about December 30, 2015.
New Year's Eve was very quiet for us. Let's face it, we're not really party animals in this house. The kids wanted snacky foods for dinner, so we made some wings and stomboli for them, and I worked on cleaning up some leftovers in the fridge. I had promised the kids that I would play a game with them, and so we played Head Bandz Act Up. What a riot. I only took a few pictures, but this was Lauren trying to get Mara to realize that she had a card on her head that said "zoo". Made me laugh. Lauren ended up winning that game. I was pretty impressed with the ways that she came up with to act out the clues for the rest of us. Let's just say she did a better job at it than I did. (But give me a break-- the one I had to act out was "earthquake". Just how would YOU do that?) When we were done with that game, we played a new one of Mara's called Frankie's Food Truck. All of the games like that are so perfect for that age group. We had a great time.
And Lauren won again. Lucky duck.
After the games were over, I figured my only slim chance of being able to stay awake to see the new year ushered in was to keep myself busy. So I started working on taking down our Christmas decorations. The kids started to de-ornament the tree while I gathered everything else that wasn't a snowman to get the house back into shape. Undecorating is about 50% depressing, and 50% refreshing to me. I love how the house looks with the lights and the decorations, but I also love getting rid of the clutter and having some space back in the living room. I worked at that for the next few hours, and then found myself sitting on the couch with three sleepy kids who desperately wanted to make it to midnight. About 11:15 they all gave up-- Mara asleep in my lap, Joshua begging to go to bed, and Lauren finally deciding that it would be OK to DVR the ball drop to watch it in the morning. Jason was asleep on the chair after having been out to a car accident call. And so, it was a very quiet, although productive New Year. I'll share a few things I'm working on for 2016 in a post tomorrow. I'm not one for huge resolutions and certainly not a long list of things, but there are definitely a few things I'd like to improve on in the new year.
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