Today after leaving work I began to hear an unfamiliar flap flap flap sound coming from the back of the Black Stallion, the name I affectionately gave Landen's 1996 S10 pickup truck.
Landen was nearby in the van on his way to pick up the girls so I pulled into a gas station and after a quick examination we discovered that a very large screw had somehow embedded itself into the back tire. Landen whipped off his dress shirt and after some time we had the damaged tire off and the spare in it's place.
Sometimes the irony of life is too much to handle.
It's no coincidence that God allowed our tire to go flat on the same day that Landen and I had been feeling so very deflated ourselves. In the madness of life and two small children, and jobs, and master's degrees, it's easy to let marriage fall to the wayside. It's so easy to get sucked into the black hole of all the crazy and let the one thing that brought all the crazy together get put back on the back burner. Conversations get interrupted; words get misinterpreted, and without meaning to feelings get hurt. A giant screw gets wedged into your relationship and it feels like the air is slowly leaking out.
It's no coincidence that on this exact same day I had spent an hour discussing life and how complex it is with a co-worker who was encouraging me to learn to let go and invest in each other. To seek time where we could invest in just the two of us and learn to have fun again.
God is not a God of coincidences.
One of my favorite quotes is from Evan Almighty. It says :
"If someone prays for patience, you think God gives them patience? Or does he give them the opportunity to be patient? If he prayed for courage, does God give him courage, or does he give him opportunities to be courageous? If someone prayed for the family to be closer, do you think God zaps them with warm fuzzy feelings, or does he give them opportunities to love each other?"
God is a God of opportunity. He requires patience and so He gives us opportunities to be patient. He requires humility and therefore gives us humbling moments that force us to put our focus where it needs to be. He hears our prayers of desire for time with our spouse and so he gives us flat tires to allow for some uninterrupted time together.
It's funny that when I found myself in a place of longing for my husband and time with just him, when I found myself craving a time of conversation and laughter I found myself talking and laughing and joking about the unfortunate circumstances of changing a tire in dress clothes, in a parking lot, on a 90 degree day,with the very one I desired the time with from the start.
God is not a God of coincidences.
God is a God of opportunity.
The question is what are you going to choose to do with the opportunities He gives you?
