On Time God

Well, I was going to make an entry last night, but I used my writing time doing a Cyrano de Bergerac thing for my brother – writing a letter to his ex-wife for him trying to explain some things about him, their relationship, how he feels and who he is today. You see I have this one unique gift in my life… not much else… I have a minor skill of being able to understand something of how people feel and then translate it back into the written word. It comes in handy sometimes, especially when it comes to writing letters for people or even business proposals. I’ve written numerous memos, business letters, and even personal letters for people covering touchy situations and handling them in diplomatic ways that (hopefully) lessened potential antagonism and heightened improved communication. So I spent a couple of hours last night constructing a draft of a letter that my brother could work off of when answering a particularly difficult letter that was written to him by his ex-wife.

He would love nothing more than to at least have a relationship with her and, even more so, his children, but they want nothing to do with him just yet. They would be interested in taking whatever money he would/could give them, but don’t seem particularly interested in having any kind of communication other than to tell him over and over again how horrible he is/was. I understand their anger because when he was on drugs he acted very terribly, but he has been clean now for well over a year, almost two, and he has shown a great deal of stability. He has sent them a lot of money, gifts and extended all sorts of repentance and apologies. If my ex-husband had extended even ¼ of that effort (as opposed to 0% of that effort) I would have certainly considered forgiveness). Anyway, his wife is bitter and still angry and may never forgive him. She’s not the forgiving type. Even when they were married she was quite focused on the money (as were the children) which may have contributed to his self and family-destructive behavior although is no excuse for that. He is now doing whatever he can to foster some sort of beginnings of communication and he asked for suggestions on how to position his thoughts. As we talked and I made suggestions, it was ultimately decided it would be wiser if I just jotted some things down and emailed them to him. So that’s what I did. I hope it helps. I’m praying about that now.

Speaking of prayer, I had a little experience to ponder yesterday. I made the mistake of using the electric switch on the driver’s side of our car to roll down the window on the passenger’s side. Now this shouldn’t be a problem except that our car is aging and has decided that it doesn’t like to roll the passenger window back up if we roll it down using the driver’s switch. We’ve had this problem for about 9-10 months but it will usually roll back up after a minute or two of waiting. My husband has warned me not to do that, however, as he is more cautious and doesn’t want to take a chance on the window getting stuck in the down position. Consequently, I usually don’t use the driver’s switch. Yesterday, however, I did. Now each time I’ve used the driver’s switch, the window has rolled back up for me when I’ve reached over and used the passenger’s switch to roll it up, so I felt fairly confident I would be able to roll it back up that way. Yesterday, however, it wouldn’t budge. The afternoon went on and the window wouldn’t relent. I took my son to guitar lessons and the window still wouldn’t roll up.

By this time I was feeling pretty unraveled. I felt humiliated and upset that my husband would be annoyed with me for not listening to him and I really didn’t want to be the cause of added stress to his life or displeasing to him. I pounded on the passenger door and kicked it trying to jar the mechanism. I stuck my fingers into the window area and tried to pull the window up. I did anything I could think of. Finally, I lay my hands on the door and window area and prayed that God would make it work. I kept praying. I begged God to fix this stupid car window. I figured this would be an easy thing for Him. I mean I knew it would be a miracle, but I couldn’t see any reason why He shouldn’t do it. I quoted the Bible to Him… “ask me anything in my name and I will do it… I’m asking in Jesus name, God, so why don’t you just do this miracle?” I wasn’t trying to be annoying or sacrilegious or anything, it does say that in the Bible. I don’t often “use” that but I just couldn’t understand why fixing the window would be a big deal. Pretty soon, though, it became obvious that God wasn’t going to fix it so I threw in the towel and just left it open and went upstairs to make dinner. I wasn’t angry at God or anything like that. I figure God’s decisions are God’s decisions and He’s always done a lot for me so I can’t complain, but I was just hoping He’d fix my window too… you know how it is 😉 one can ask.

Later that night my son and husband went out to play Frisbee for awhile. When they came back home they tried the window again and, finally, it rolled back up. Well, I thought about that and I realized that THAT was answered prayer… THAT was the miracle I had prayed for earlier. Now perhaps it would have been more exciting (and certainly more convenient for me) if He would have fixed it earlier so that I wouldn’t have had to face my husband with the rolled down window, but He DID fix it and I was spared the trouble and expense of having to take into the shop (not to mention freezing on my way to work and back before having the time to take it in the afternoon).

So the thing I was thinking about yesterday is that He does say, “ask me anything in my name and I will do it…” but he cleverly does not commit to when. In my old church they have a song that they sing that includes the lyrics, “He may not come when you want Him, but He’ll be there right on time…” and I’ve found that to be true time and time again.