This weekend we decided to try something we have been talking about for a while. On Saturday afternoon we picked up our rental camper and headed out to the beach for a fun-filled family camping experience. We have started becoming very "outdoorsy" lately, and for those of you who don't know me...I'm not really an outdoors kind of girl. I'm getting adventerous though, so I was up to the challenge.
Overall, it was a pretty good night. I won't talk about the fact that I have a yet-to-be-treated sinus infection, or about the trials of keeping an 18 month old away from our fire and out of other campsites, or about our 5 year old screaming ALL NIGHT LONG with a stomach ache from eating 4 hot dogs right before bedtime....no, those are memories I will keep to myself...instead I'll tell you about our journey home.
After we packed up our campsite, we returned the trailer to the rental office and started heading home. My husband and I were exhausted, and the kids were bouncing off the walls. We decided that Cory would drop me and two of the boys off at home to get cleaned up and ready for rest time while he and Micah would grab some lunch and bring it home. An hour later, the five of us were sitting in the parking lot of a strip mall waiting on a tow truck; the trailer had had apparently drained our truck's battery completely (though we didn't REALLY know yet that that was all it was). We tried jumper cables, but it was gone, and not being car people we weren't quite sure what to do...there's a reason we pay for roadside assistance... Since we weren't sure what was wrong with it, we told the driver to tow it to the dealership a couple of towns over; we would have to wait until they opened on Monday, but what else were we going to do?
To my surprise, the driver turned out to be a really nice guy who offered to help us out. He attempted to jump it, and while it didn't work there were some indications that it may just be a dead battery. He offered to tow it to a local store that sold batteries and help my husband install it to see if that's all it was. If not, he would then tow it to the dealership. He didn't have to do any of it, he could have just put it on his truck and towed it, but he saw us...exhausted with three children, loaded down with camping equiptment...and he chose to help us out. The new battery worked; we were saved a great deal of time and money just because someone went out of their way to help us. In case you are thinking he made more money by doing the extra work, rest assured, he didn't; he was just a nice guy doing a nice thing. I love his example, and I wish we saw that more in our world today.
I can see my heart as a dead battery sometimes. I go through periods of time when it is just drained from stress, heart ache, doubt and fear; in those moments God always seems to send just the right person my way to come along side of me and help me replace the old dead feelings for new joy. In 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 it says, "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God." This is such a beautiful picture of passing on God's love, one to another.
I can think of very specific times in my life when someone (sometimes a friend, family member, or a complete stranger) has come beside me to bring comfort and understanding. I am so thankful for those who have stepped in at just the right time; I think of when I was 18 sitting in my boyfriend's car crying and struggling with a decision, a woman knocked on the window to ask for directions...she saw my tears and spoke words that 15 years later still ring in my ears. I think of the girl I barely knew from my church in Florida who called me 8 years ago to tell me her heartbreaking story of loss in order to bring comfort and hope into what I thought was a hopeless situation. I think of my cousin and his wife who have faithfully answered every question and comforted me in my fears as my husband and I were walking the same road they did a few years earlier. In everything, it takes someone who has walked the road you are walking to give you just the comfort you need for your journey. Someone who has never experienced what you are walking through can sympathize and try to understand, but it's the person who has been in the same trenches you are in who can help you through them. That's the way God designed it; He brings comfort to our lives, walks us through our troubles so that we can then pass it on to someone else He brings into our lives. We were meant to take care of each other, to comfort each other with the comfort He gives us. We are not meant to spout off and speak of things we know nothing about, but rather we are meant to wisely come along side someone and overflow onto them the comfort and love that God has given us.
Our tow truck driver was a nice guy who unknowingly illustrated to me God's plan of passing things on. As I watched him walk my husband through changing the truck's battery, and as I watch my husband eargerly learn from this stranger, I understood a little more about why it's so important to be open to community. Our world is full of people who look out only for themselves, and it's full of people (like me) who are sometimes afraid to share what God has given them with others, but our mission, our calling, is to pass it on...to give the gift away. I am so thankful for those who have given the gift of comfort to me. Think of those who have given it to you...and pass it on.
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