Tacos, Tires, a Tofu Box: A Story of God’s Providence

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A few weeks ago, my husband Ryan, our daughter Deise, and I drove up to Syracuse for a regional church conference. While there, we hung out with our good friends Kurt and Amy at their apartment complex pool. Our girls got to swim together while the adults caught up. As we left the complex, this happened:

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We were driving down a busy street in front of a large shopping complex, and an elderly gentleman pulled out without seeing us. My husband braked hard, and no one was hurt, but our car was toast. (Or rather, it was fixable, but it was so old and its mileage so high that the insurance company decided the repairs would cost more than the worth of the car.)

Here’s the crazy part. Less than half an hour ago, we’d gotten four new tires. Which were now on an undrivable car. Wanna know why we’d gotten those tires?

It happened like this: While driving up to Syracuse, we stopped to see my son, Daniel, who was at a math camp at Bard College for a few weeks. (Yes, my son is a math nerd. Since he’s returned from camp, he’s been busy trying to discover algorithms to solve Rubix cubes.) We rescued him from cafeteria food for the afternoon (“They serve tofu dogs. They’re terrible.”) and let him pick his food of choice. He picked tacos. So we drove to this little place we’d seen in town. As we entered the driveway, we heard a loud pop or crack under the car. We stopped; Ryan checked around to see what had hit us and saw nothing. We found out the taco place was closed and went elsewhere. End of story, we thought.

Except, that when we got to Syracuse, it turned out our tire was leaking. Ryan filled it with air once, but that was only a temporary solution. There happened to be a tire store close to Kurt and Amy’s house, so while we girls swam, Ryan and Kurt took our car to the tire store. The tire guys took one look at our tires and said all the treads were dangerously worn down. So Ryan got all the tires replaced, then hopped in the car to pick Deise and me up. That’s when the accident happened.

So, let’s review the sequence of events:

  1. Daniel’s taco craving leads us to a leaky tire. And the taco place isn’t even open!
  2. We replace all 4 tires, to the tune of $200.
  3. 15 minutes later, we get into a car accident. Those $200 tires are now on a worthless car. (We joke about posting the picture of our wreck on Instagram with the hashtag #look ma, new tires!)

Oh, yes, and we’re on vacation!

Not a great story, right? $200 down the toilet, plus a wrecked car, during what’s supposed to be a rejuvenating getaway.

But what if we tell the story a different way? What if Daniel’s taco craving actually ended up preventing us and the other driver from serious injuries? What if, because we had four new tires with new treads instead of four old tires with substandard treads, those new tires were able to slow down the impact of our collision enough that we all walked away, unhurt? What if God used Daniel’s hankering for Mexican and a mysteriously flat tire to look out for us all?

Now, can we prove that’s what happened? Empirically, beyond a shadow of a doubt? Of course not. It’s absolutely possible that this sequence of events was random. We could absolutely choose to lament those beautiful, shiny new tires that are going to waste on a busted car somewhere in a collision repair shop in Syracuse. But we’ve chosen to focus our attention elsewhere, to tell a story of God’s providential timing and protection.

Life of Pi author Yann Martel summed up the meaning behind his novel like this: “Life is a story; you can choose your own story; a story with God is the better story.”

Sometimes faith is not just believing in God in the abstract; it’s the story you choose to tell.

What’s your story?

sdrP.S. Here’s our “new” used car, a Toyota Scion XB. When we briefly lived in Hawaii, we had an older version of this car that the locals called a “tofu box” because, well, that’s what it looked like. This more recent model is less boxy, but the name has stuck.

 

‘Tis a Gift to be Simple . . . and Sugary: My Son’s Vacation from the Food Pyramid

Day 29 of my 30-day writing challenge
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My son is made happy by two very simple things: sugar and toys. When he was five, we took him to Disney World. He enjoyed the day, no question, but the thing that made him happiest? A Mickey-Mouse ear-shaped balloon inside another balloon. He was semi-anxious the whole day until we bought it, and as soon as we did, he was content.

Six years later, you might think his tastes had grown more sophisticated.

You’d be wrong.

He had very little pocket money to bring with him on our vacation, because he spent it all in the last two weeks on cheap motorized cars, fidget spinners, and a lollipop the size of his head. He is, however, very sweet and generous with his money. He shared his cars with his godfather, and he gave one of the fidget spinners and a foot-long unicorn pop to his little sister. (Because when you’re sharing the love, you might as well share the tooth decay, too.)

Yesterday, the teens at our church conference — all 500 of them —  went to a local water park. Because the trip was so poorly organized, my son only rode one waterslide the entire day. I thought he’d be devastated, but he was pleased with how the day had gone. As he explained, he’d brought a bag of gumballs along with him. He sold gumballs for 10 cents each, making $2. He also sold a free tee-shirt he’d won that morning for $3. He made enough money to buy something he’d been coveting all week. It was a can of blue soda! That lights up! And, he had two dollars left over!

He also came home with two tubes of squeezable SlushPuppie sour cherry candy, one won in a game, and one given to him for no reason. You can see why it was a good day.

I should explain that my son that the instincts to be a killer entrepreneur. He had a nice side business going at his school this year. He bought fidget spinners, sold them for a profit, and then bought more fidget spinners and sold those. Just as the fidget spinner craze was dying down, his package of fidget cubes arrived from China, and he also made a profit off of those.

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I should probably have been upset that he was selling items that were banned from school in school, but I was too busy being relieved that someone in my family was showing some business sense. Between the two of us, my husband and I have a pile of degrees in ministry and the humanities, and (clearly) not a lick of financial acumen. It’s nice to know that our son will be able to take care of us in our dotage.

This afternoon, Grammy and her husband took my son and I to the movies. He brought his two tubes of sour candy, but didn’t feel like that was enough. So he talked Grammy into buying him a theater-sized box of watermelon SourPatches.

By the time Spiderman: Homecoming was over, every last bite and squeeze was gone. (Full disclosure: I did eat several of his sour watermelon candies. After the first one overloaded all the sour taste receptors on my tongue, the next seven or eight were surprisingly good.)

In summation, let us count the sweets that my son consumed this past week:

Friday (on the plane): Five mint chocolate Oreos. A bag of chocolate chip graham crackers shaped like bunnies. The caramel-flavored tea cookies the flight attendant handed out.

Saturday: (Brunch buffet) Mini muffins in chocolate, blueberry and banana nut. Waffles with syrup. A mini s’mores cake. A chocolate croissant. A fruit turnover. Later in the afternoon, a scoop of rainbow sorbet in a sugar cone.

Sunday: (At Grammy and her husband’s anniversary party) Chocolate cake with chocolate and white chocolate mousse filling. Fun-sized Hershey bars.

Monday: Pancakes with high fructose corn syrup maple syrup substitute. Two scoops of Ben and Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie, plus bites of Cherry Garcia and Berry Berry Sorbet. Leftover chocolate cake.

Tuesday: French toast with high fructose corn syrup maple syrup substitute. Three kinds of frozen yogurt — pineapple guava, watermelon, and mango — topped with gummy worms and mango boba balls (juice filled-gelatin spheres that pop and squish).

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Today: Part of a chocolate doughnut for breakfast. Two tubes of sour gel and a box of SourPatch watermelon. A can of light-up soda. (It turned out to be flavored like a Cherry Sprite.)

Oh, and I hardly ever let my kids have soda. This week, because we ate at so many fast food places, I relaxed my restrictions. In for a penny, in for the Gross National Product of China, right? I would not be surprised to learn my son is running on root beer instead of oxygen and hemoglobin.

At least we decided not to stop at Krispy Kreme on the way home from the movies. That might have been the only restraint we showed all week.

 

 

image credit: Dad’s Guide to Disney World