Seeing Blessings In The Storm

Well today I'm going to talk about something that I think the Lord has been trying to teach both Dale and I in the last while, something that I know all of us need to learn but it has been a difficult lesson.

As a lot of you know things have been hard for us financially and it has been very stressful. It seems as though there is something new everyday that happens that's not good. Last week Dale had to get new tires on the truck (almost $1600) and that was only for 4 of them then on Friday on his way into Edmonton a set of springs (like shocks on cars) broke so on Saturday he had that fixed ($1300 something later), then on Sunday on his way home something else happened with the truck and he ended up having to leave his trailer for someone else to take home and he babied the truck home.

On Monday the truck was back in the shop the result of which was, there is nothing wrong ($400 something) and you need to get 4 more new tires, another almost $1600. So Dale gets back on the road on Tuesday night and he is at his work and the boss says "ok Dale you are ready to go." So Dale goes out and hops in the truck and pulls the truck away from the dock to close the doors on the trailer, well they were not finished in his trailer and one of the guys that works on the dock was IN Dale's trailer when he pulled away and hurt his foot and the other dock guy was about to drive in the trailer with the fork lift, thankfully he didn't crash! Dale felt awful and of course he's going to check from now on to make sure that they are done. After this happens Dale gets on his way and the police are pulling trucks over on the on ramp to the freeway, Dale gets pulled over and they check his log book, well he had one thing missing on it and so he gets a fine. The rest of his trip went well and he will be home sometime this morning.

Yesterday a letter comes in the mail and we are getting audited by the Ministry of Small business for our fuel tax. When you have your own trucking company and are independent you have to pay fuel tax quarterly and so they want to check everything over and make sure we've been paying all we were supposed to, they pick people at random. So I open and read the letter and I start having a tight feeling in my chest, I'm like oh my goodness I'm having a panic attack, so I just breathed and calmed down and after a bit I was ok.

So do you think this is a lot? It is for me, I've been trying to figure out why this is all happening, why is the Lord letting this happen to us? What is He trying to teach us? What has come to both Dale and I is that we NEED to be thankful in ALL situations, it is scriptural Ephesians 5:20 says You will always give thanks for everything the God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; Psalm 34:1 says I will praise the Lord at all times, I will constantly speak his praises. So how do we do that? Well I heard one time a pastor explain it this way: if you are on the side of the road with a flat tire and you are on your way to the airport to make a flight you simply say "Thank-you Lord for this situation I'm in" it doesn't necessarily mean that you are happy about it but you are thankful.

Through all of this we have also been blessed and I think that is the Lords way of saying "I have not forgotten about you, I LOVE you" Last week we were given a free turkey and then this week I am getting a free pair of glasses which I badly needed, my prescription has changed a lot and I went and priced out glasses but they are just way out of what we can afford. These things are what I use to remind myself that we are not forgotten that through all of the frustrations and through all of the difficulties we are still being taken care of, HE will never leave us or forsake us.