An Outrageous Prayer
We prayed ‘An Outrageous Prayer’ about a month ago. It was what we really wanted, for numerous reasons, but realisticially, it was so far from reality that it was almost a joke. And I have to admit, as we prayed for it, even though it was a heart’s desire, I didn’t think it would be answered. It was too, well, too outrageous!
Just a quick background in case you don’t know. Tim, my wonderful husband has Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. He’s not as bad as some, but he’s not good either, which means I am left doing most of the running the household, raising the boys and all that jazz. He’s still working as much as he can, the upside to being self-employed means he can work his own hours, the downside is that we only get paid for the hours he works, which isn’t much!
Anyway, once we got our new car (August 2006) this meant that our old blue car (1994 Ford Fairmont) was there for Tim to drive himself into the city once a week to see his clients, without being locked into me picking him up or dropping him off if I needed the car - of course, this all occured while he was still pushing himself and at that stage we didn’t know he had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, he was just sick and tired most of the time and very good at just pushing himself that little bit further. He was still pushing and doing things when I would have already given up and stayed home!
Once the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome kicked in and hit him really hard in the first half of 2007, driving himself to the city was no longer an option - he was not safe to drive, it was like he had had a few too many to drink. He now only goes into the city about once a fortnight (or less) and I drive him in and as he’s only there for a couple of hours, the boys and I go to the Aquarium, Museum or Zoo or something and have a good time waiting for him to call.
And so, we no longer had any need for a second car. It had been sitting on our front lawn for months - actually it had been parked on our front lawn for over a year, but it’s been the last six months where it just hadn’t been driven at all. We considered selling it, but the effort we’d have to go to, to be able to sell it was well beyond what we could give, either for Tim, as one of the symptoms of CFS means that it is really hard for him to arrange things like that, and for me, well, I was already stretched just looking after the family! A friend offered to see what he could do, but it didn’t seem like much was happening on that front either. And as we are planning on leaving for our trip around Australia in February next year (2008) we had to get rid of it somehow, but we knew it was worth more than the $50 that the wreckers would offer us.
We would have been quite happy to give it away to someone who had been praying for God to provide them with a car and was handy enough with cars to fix it up and get it running, but we hadn’t heard of anyone in that position. So one day after talking this through, we decided that what we really wanted was for someone to come along and take it away for us; someone to knock on our front door and offer to buy the Ford. And so that is what we prayed. Now we live in a small no through road and we had no for sale sign up or anything, so for someone to come and offer to buy the car was going to be a miraculous answer to prayer.
A month later the car was still sitting there. But then Sunday afternoon about two weeks ago we had our neighbour from a couple of doors up, who we didn’t really know, come and knock on our front door. And pretty much the first thing he said was, “What are you doing with your old Ford?” And by the next day he had bought it!!!
Our God is totally awesome, totally awesome. And on that very same Sunday we were given $50 which meant I could do the rest of the grocery shopping. God provides us with everything we need AND more! We can’t see how things are going to work out, but we know that our God is looking after us and we trust Him.
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