Light Bulb Moment

I had a light bulb moment last night, and I wanted to share it.

The Princess has dance class on Wednesday afternoons. She loves her dance class, and I'm so grateful that we were able to find an affordable class that would allow us to provide an activity for her to look forward to during the week.

The one difficulty about the class is that we only have one car. In fact, that's one of the main difficulties about our life in general - I feel like I'm stuck at home a lot more often than I'd like to be, because it's kind of difficult to juggle the car between DH's work and home. Usually he has to come home at some point during the day and then the girls and I will drop him back off at work and pick him up later. I tend to feel guilty/worried about this, because our car has a LOT of miles on it, and I hate putting more miles on the car than is absolutely necessary - I worry that it's going to reach a point where we won't even have *one* car.

Anyway, back to yesterday. :) Dance class ended, and it was starting to drizzle outside. I put the girls in the car, and then I remembered that DH had mentioned that there was a problem with the driver's side windshield wiper. The bolt that holds the wiper at the bottom comes loose, and when that happens, the wiper won't work until the bolt is tightened. I turned on the car and tried using the wiper, and it definitely wasn't working. So I called DH and asked him how to fix it. He told me where to find the wrench, and I attempted to tighten the wiper.

Well, no matter what I tried, I couldn't get the bolt tight enough. I was starting to panic. I was in tears with DH on the phone, asking what we had possibly been thinking when we decided to move to the other side of the country with only one car and no family to call when we run into situations like this. He gave me suggestions on a couple of people to call, but I knew they were either at work or had kids at home, and I just can't stand the thought of inconveniencing friends.

So I was praying really hard that I could get the windshield wiper to work. It didn't happen. The rain finally let up, and I drove to pick up DH from work worrying the whole time that it was going to start pouring rain and grumbling inside about how silly it was to move out here with just one car. I was pretty crabby for the first part of the evening.

Last night, as I was going to bed, I was thinking about the situation again. I was asking myself why Heavenly Father hadn't answered my prayer and helped me fix the windshield wiper. I tend to doubt myself a lot, and I start to feel like my prayers are never answered. I'm doubting a lot of things right now (mostly money stuff - I hate money), and the one car situation only compounds things. As I continued to think about the situation, I suddenly had the very clear thought that my prayer *had* been answered. My "light bulb moment" was when I realized that even though Heavenly Father hadn't allowed me to fix the windshield wiper, it had completely stopped raining and I was able to drive all the way to DH's work without any problems.

It's made me realize that I need to try harder to appreciate what Heavenly Father is doing for my family. My prayers may not be visibly answered in exactly the way I'm expecting (and I'm usually looking for a very literal answer to my prayers), but He is there, and He's watching out for me and my family. I hope I can get better at realizing that and remembering it when I'm feeling frustrated.