A few months back, I had the fortunate opportunity to find the silver lining on a dark cloud that was hanging over me and come to a better understanding of what gratitude brings to our life. On a trip to visit my father, I had the rather unfortunate luck of blowing a tire driving on I75. It was a Sunday afternoon and we were about 5 miles from the next exit to get assistance. My husband, who has a bad back, was unable to change our tire, so I proceeded to call our insurance company for assistance. They told me that they would send someone out and to expect a call from emergency road services in approximately 30 minutes to get our location. As we sat and waited for our call we noticed our van was beginning to overheating. So we turned it off and opened the windows to let some of the hot "fresh" Florida air circulate through our van. My 6 month old was fast asleep in the backseat and was oblivious to what was going on. My fourteen year old started complaining about being bored and hot. I was waiting....waiting....waiting for that call so we could be on our way again. Ten minutes after my initial call to my insurance company, I received a call from emergency road services. They said they should be there in about 45 minutes. Wonderful ...... Sitting around waiting, I decided to instigate a little game of I spy with my 14 year old. At first he was not very interested, but after awhile he started getting into it and it helped to pass the time. About 25 minutes later the tow truck pulled up and a very nice young man assisted us with putting our spare tire on. He advised us that we needed to get a new tire as soon as possible as our spare was rather old and probably would not get us the 35 miles we needed to get back home. He suggested we try a Walmart the next exit down. We got back on the road and made our way to Walmart. We pulled up to their service station at 5:04 pm. When we approached the counter we were told by the clerk that they closed 4 minutes ago and that they could not help us with our situation. My husband explained that we just blew a tire and that we were 35 miles from home and could not make it home on our spare. The clerk again repeated that they closed 4 minutes ago and they could not help. As we began to walk away the manager of the department who overheard our exchange came over and told us they could could not reopen a bay, but that she would send someone out to change the tire for us in the parking lot. She told us to give them about a half hour and it should be done. A mere 20 minutes later we were paged saying that our van was ready. 90 minutes after our initial blow out we were back on the road and headed home. When I look at this scenario I can view it from two mind frames. The first is the negative: we blew a tire, it cost us $80 to fix, it took us 2 hours to drive 35 miles, it was hot and our van was overheating..........The second is to look at all of the blessings: our insurance company reacted quickly and covered (with no cost to us) to have our spare tire put on , the gentleman who put our tire on was very nice despite the fact that it was hot out and our spare gave him some difficulty, Walmart helped us despite the fact that they had every right to decline to help us (believe me I never thought I would say that I got EXCELLENT service from them), and the simple fact that we could have gotten seriously hurt when the tire blew out at the speed we were driving, yet we were fine. Although life may not be perfect and things happen that upset or frustrate us it is important to realize that despite our difficulties God is with us. We may not understand what is happening to us at the time, but many times there are hidden blessings in what we are experiencing, that gratitude can help us see. By viewing this situation from a stance of gratitude rather than frustration and anger, I felt more at peace and was able to feel God's presence with me. The darkness is where my frustration, anger, pain, control and anxiety dwell. If I allow that darkness to overtake me it clouds my perception of my circumstances and distances me from God's amazing gift of grace and peace. By partaking in the light of gratitude the darkness can no longer dwell in my heart robbing me of the great gift of my heavenly Father's presence and love.
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