because you say so.

because i started my job in the middle of the school year, they didn't have a route to assign me to so on most days i fill in for a driver who is sick, or on vacation. since i started, two other drivers have come to work there as well, and they've both been assigned routes while i just keep getting to fill in. normally i would be annoyed, but in light of the fact that i'll be quitting much sooner than they expected it works out well, for my conscience at least, since i wasn't completely honest about my intentions when i started. but hey, its a job, whatev. plus i was just prefacing, that's not what this post is about.

anyway. driving all these different routes really poses a challenge, since you can generally assume at least a part of the directions they send you out with are not going to be right, and you never know about what kind of kids you are going to end up with on your bus...generally they don't warn you about those things, unless its really serious. so every day is an adventure. a couple weeks ago i was driving a particularly stressful route, for whatever reasons, but after i caught on it was really easy and i learned a new area of town that i wasn't previously familar with. the week after that i was given a route, told the directions were correct and sent on my way. when i looked at the directions, the street names seemed familar to the ones on the previous week's route, but you can never be too sure. there are like three streets in schaumburg named Cheltenhamer, all in different neighborhoods....

once i got to where the directions told me should be the first stop, i realized they were not correct AT ALL, and i was actually at the third stop. luckily, because i had been driving such a difficult route in the same area the week before, i knew exactly where i needed to be, and approximately how to get there. i didn't even stress out that much, or get too angry at the driver who i was covering for. all's well that ends well.

the next week i had the same thing happen again, and because i knew the area from the route i was doing the week before, i was able to work it out.

it was like i was being taught some kind of a lesson actually. like maybe, something that seems really difficult today will prove to be quite a beneficial situation for the next path that life takes you down, making that journey a little easier than it would have been without your history.

so ok, i thought, obviously someone's trying to help me figure something out here.

just last week eli and i were in downtown chicago and had found ourselves in a....situation which caused us to be across town from where our car was parked and needing to get to it very quickly and not knowing precisely how to get there. (long story very short). we'd asked like five people for directions, and while people that live in the city always seem to look down their noses at suburbanites, none of the people we asked were of any help whatsoever. "oh yeah, thats just around the block. a five minute cab ride." nuh uh.

we picked a random building and asked the doorman. he clearly had no clue and while he was trying to help i offered up a quick prayer "do you want us to make it to this meeting? come on now. a little help?" (we were supposed to be meeting with a group to share about our ministry.) moments later a RANDOM lady walked up and asked us what we were looking for? were we going to walk that far? and could she give us a ride?

"bing" said ange, when i told her the story. "totally an angel. did she disappear as soon as you guys walked away?"

i mean, basically. eli said she had books and tapes on small groups in the back seat but there was a copy of Eckhart Tolle's "The Power of Now" on the floor in the front (see Oprah's bookclub), so it remains unsure whether she really was an angel, just a christian, or simply a good samaritan. we didn't even ask for her name.

i mean, it was really awesome, and we totally made it to the meeting on time thanks to her, praise the lord, but it wasnt until today that i think i connected the lesson i've been learning lately about trials and hard times with the "divine intervention"??? we experienced last thursday.

we leave for our trip two weeks from tomorrow and we're finding that we are going to come out exactly even (hopefully???maybe not. we'll see) as far as our funds are concerned. don't get me wrong there's nothing the matter with coming out even, but that even means $0 in june when we come back.

eli said "we better start praying for a miracle. by friday." but i didn't want to go quite that far with it, "miraculous" is not a term i want to just throw around. but honestly, when i really think about it, God answering ANY of my prayers, no matter how small, is definitely undeserved, unexpected, and miraculous, as pretty much everything i want or need seems out of reach or unattainable on my own. even getting to that meeting on time last thursday seemed out of our hands, and then "bing", that lady showed up and we weren't even technically late. so then i realized, god answered that prayer in perfect timing and also almost instantaenously.

so if i think friday is too soon for him to pull things together, i'm wrong. but also, if things don't come together in what i think would be "on time", if i have been prayerfully asking him to do his thing his way, whatever that means, he's going to pull it together in perfect timing, no matter when that is. And on the other hand, if it happens that when we get back from our trip, we come out just about even and he's taking us through a tough time, i can know he's just preparing us for our next journey, and things will be easier then because of where we're at now. i didn't know i was learning my route at work cause the next week i'd get lost there, and i didn't know what i needed when i asked him to help us out in the city, so how can i worry about what's coming next now?