God's Timing

Don't worry, this isn't a deep one. The title sounds like it, but seriously, God's timing is crazy!

Jesse and I discovered last week that even though we try not to plan events for my summer program and his youth groups on the same day (so that kids who are involved in both don't miss out on one or the other), we accidently did it last week. Generally, my group goes on field trips on Wednesdays, but our trip to the Orange County Fair was moved back a day since kids get in free to the fair on Thursdays (can't pass that up when you have a big group!).

Jesse tries to keep his youth groups busy over the summer, and has been averaging a trip a week to the beach lately. Last Thursday was his Jr. High group's turn, so I encouraged all the Jr. Highers that I have in my summer program to join the beach trip instead of the fair (and possibly implanted the idea that Jesse might be able to take them to the fair later...don't tell him that!)

I was bummed to miss out on a trip to the beach, but there's nothing I can do about that when they go during my work day! Sigh...I miss living by the beach.

Anyway, Jesse's group left long before I loaded my little ones into the cars and headed to the fair. We had a great day, seeing everything from Nellie, the "World's Smartest Pig," to Weird Al's new 3D brain movie. Quite the experience.

We shoved our worn out kiddos into the cars around 3:00 to enjoy a 2 hour long tour of Orange County's traffic. Don't miss that!

When we were 20 minutes away from church, my car overheated and lost power. I was in the carpool lane, so I just moved over to the emergency lane, hopped out, locked the doors (had to keep my curious Disney-singing quartet out of the car lanes somehow!) and check under the hood. All fluids were present and accounted for. With my beloved old car, I've become quite the queen of grumpy engines.

I had just hopped back into my seat and asked the boys what we should sing while we gave my car a break, when my cell phone rang. Noticing that it was one of the Jr. High girls, I answered it assuming that she was wondering when I'd be back at church.

"Bethany," she said, "we're right in front of you."

Confused, I looked over my car's hood to see Jesse's car hauling down the emergency lane in reverse.

You can't imagine the smile that broke out over my face! Jesse leaped out of his car and confidently strode toward mine. He checked everything that I had and then sat reassuringly with me until the car had cooled down. Then he took the keys from me, handed me his own, and said he'd see me back at church.

The boys in my car whooped and clapped when they saw that Jesse was going to be their driver from here on out. Instantly, he was their hero.

Mine too!

How crazy is it that we happened to be on the same freeway at the same time from two completely different locations?

I only know of One who can orchestrate something like that.