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| Photo by bpcraddock at Pixabay |
I glared at my husband. “If we had a smart phone with GPS, we wouldn’t be in this fix.”
Our fix? Trying to decipher Google Directions in an unfamiliar town at midnight after a sixteen-hour drive, exhausted, with blood sugar somewhere around the South China Sea.
My husband’s response, “We don’t need to spend hundreds of dollars on a phone.”
“But these directions are wrong, and I can’t read the map on my laptop and drive at the same time. We’re going in circles and have been for over two hours!”
“Don’t snap at me.”
I pulled into a parking lot and shoved the truck into park. “I’m calling the hotel.”
The desk clerk’s response to my request for directions, “I’m sorry, I’m new in town. Let me pull up Google Maps.”
I really, really wanted to cry.
After spending another half hour going in the same wrong circle, I pulled into a parking lot, bounced over the curb I didn’t see, rammed the truck into park, and grabbed my laptop.
“I’m pulling up a city map, finding our location, and figuring out my own directions.” With a sob I added, “But I can’t drive, watch traffic, read street signs, and look at the map all at the same time!”
My husband didn’t reply. Instead, he slid out of the truck, marched over to the driver’s door, and yanked it open.
“Get out.”
“I thought you were too tired to drive.”
“I’m awake now.”
“Fine!”
I stomped around to the passenger’s side and grabbed my computer. We were only two miles from the hotel — and had been for the last two hours!
The next morning, my son called and asked about the trip.
“Well,” I said, “We decided not to go through with the divorce.”
“That bad, huh?”
However, good can come from something bad. Two weeks after our trip, my husband announced he wanted to by not one, but two GPS systems, one for the truck and one for hiking.
I raised a brow.
His reply, “I told you we should have gotten one before we took that last trip.”
That was his usual way of saying he was wrong, and I was right.
Oh, well.
When I first met the man back in 2001, he had no computer, no cell phone, not even an answering machine. We now have two laptops, two cell phones, and the recently added two GPS devices. He may yet relent on the smart phone.
However, my trust in the fallible things of this earth shattered this week, a little reminder of where my trust should lay.
A cracked valve in our geothermal unit has involved not one repair company but four different entities, and it doesn’t look like it will be fixed anytime soon, leaving us without heat or air conditioning.
I am sure God had a hand in the fact this happened now, after the heat of the summer and before the onset of cold weather. He certainly arranged for our dwindling savings account to have just enough to cover the repairs with a little left over.
So, while I may use my GPS and my other digital devices as useful tools, I need to remember they are fallible, but God is not. He’s already there in the next disaster, ready to respond with love and compassion to my faith and trust.
I so admire a person who can live without a smart phone. If a geothermal unit is going to break, September is pretty much perfect timing for it, God's perfect timing.:-)
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure how much longer we can manage without a smart phone. It seems almost everything requires one. I wanted one of those health bracelets, but they all require and app that only works with a smart phone. Oh well, I have lived a long time without one of those! And yes, God's timing is always perfect, even if we don't always agree!
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