Answered Prayers...

For those of you who don't know, my job requires me to put some serious miles on my car. It's been just over 3.5 years and I'm already pushing 100K miles that I alone have put on my car let alone the couple dozen that were already on it when I purchased the car. It's a hybrid and has really had minimal maintenance costs to this point (drastically lower than would be expected) so I'm happy.

Tonight was like most nights - full work day, call lists, time on the road, and of course, evening meetings in another corner of the Commonwealth... or so I thought.

I was driving through a particularly barren part of the state and realized that I was nearly out of gas. I began calculating in my head where the next gas station was(yes I can do this from memory in most areas of the state) and knew I probably had about 10 miles to spare, but I wasn't sure if I was remembering the area correctly. I began to pray that I'd have enough gas to get to the gas station and that I'd be safe on the road. The country highway had no street lights, nearly no inhabited structures and no shoulder to pull off on if I were to run out of gas if I had a problem. It's an area with a lot of farmland and a lot of rolling hills, but not much else.

I continued to pray for my safety and for my poor, abused Prius. After about 15 miles I roll into a BP gas station with plenty of miles to spare. I quickly said a prayer of gratitude for my safety and pumped my gas. After taking a brief pit stop I started to head back on the road... no more than 5 feet rolling forward it seemed something was not right. I quickly got out of the car to find a completely flat tire.

Now it probably doesn't seem like a blessing to get a flat tire when I'm far from home and on a time crunch to get to a meeting, but it truly was. Of the 2.5 hour drive to my meeting from my office I was on the freeway for only about an hour of the drive. The rest of the drive is on semi-remote and very remote country highways cutting through central Virginia. There are trucks moving quickly on their way and a few farmers, but nobody that I would want to find myself alone with on the side of the road.

I was blessed to not only safely get to the gas station, but also for my flat tire to come not sooner and not later than that moment. I was under bright lights of the gas station, in a protected and very public place. As I was jumping on my lug wrench to loosen up the lug nuts (I hope you're picturing me in a pencil skirt, pearls, cardigan, etc literally jumping on the crowbar/wrench). I'm sure I was quite a sight, but it was working so I was pretty happy with myself.

The second blessing of the night is that a very kind stranger walked up and offered to help. He was still in his business clothes, rolled up in his Beamer and admitted to being a former CIA agent. Props to you silver fox for being a kindhearted stranger to help a lady who clearly looks helpless and stubborn. He grabbed his much more effective and larger jack out of his car and had me back on the road in less than 10 minutes. There was absolutely no sense in proving that I was capable of changing a tire by myself. If I wanted to prove that I could do that in the parking lot to my apartment complex on a sunny day.

I got to my meeting as they were finishing the pledge of allegiance and didn't even get a run in my tights. Heavenly Father truly answers prayers and provides every opportunity for us to get through our trials. Sometimes that opportunity comes in the form of timing - only getting a flat tire when I was in a place where I could safely take care of the situation and sometimes that comes in the form of guardian angels/tender mercies to help us with those problems -hello, silver fox.

I'm also particularly grateful that Heavenly Father has a sense of humor to send my guardian angels in the form of attractive older men with no wedding rings who use pick up lines on me while they change my flat tire. This joke can be repeated many times in my future if He so chooses, but next time it would be great if he could be LDS. :)