And the car started...

What a thankful moment that was!

Yesterday, at the end of my running around with Lightning in tow (he went with me to the Library and to deliver a loaf of bread to a friend and we stopped to explore a dog-friendly park to scope out future picnic sites - great adventures for him!) I saw that I needed some gas in the Explorer.  And so we extended the day just a few minutes more and got him some Mickey D's chicken nuggets before pulling in to the gas station.  I paid and pumped my $10 worth of regular and turned the key to start the car.  And nothing happened.

Nada.  Not a sound, grunt, grind... nothing on the dash lit up.  There simply was no power to anything.  Uh oh!  And I'd left my cell phone at home.

I fidgeted and thought, and amazingly stayed completely calm and together, and tried twisting the steering wheel hard on the off chance (I knew that wasn't the problem, but action seemed better than just stewing on it) I'd locked it up again.  Nope.  I tried putting it in gear and back to park, and pumping the gas and brake, and pushing on anything on the column or dash that looked pushable.  No effect whatsoever.

I got out and walked around the car hoping for a clue.

Or a miracle.

Or at least a jolt of inspiration.

Then I got back in and turned the key one more time.  And it tried, bless its ancient Ford engine, it tried.

And then there was, for lack of a better way to describe it, the voice inside my head telling me to open my door one more time and shut it forcefully.  It wasn't really a voice so much as a thought, I guess.  Or maybe it was a voice?  I do tend to think in my own voice.  That was the magic needed to get the old girl revved up and running!  The car runs just fine, handles perfectly normal.  It's like there is no hint at the problem ever happening.  And I'm good with that!!  It seemed like someone hit a giant reset button, though.  The stereo was asking me to set it up.  That struck a little more fear into my heart.  That is not the kind of technology I have any competence with... I want to just turn it on and have it work.  After poking at a couple of buttons, I found the tuner (the fancy word for radio) and BOOM!!  The volume, reset to level 40 from my normal of 5, about shot me out through the open sunroof!

Seriously.  Painfully loud and sudden Natasha Benefield going on about opening up a dirty window... I may be scarred for life.

After I got home, I saw a news clip about a solar storm hitting the Earth at just about the same time.  And I got to wondering if that was the cause behind my car's little hiccup.  How epically dramatic and adventurous would that be in my tales?  I'm thinking it would rank right up there near the top!

Turns out the problem was a loose battery cable.

I know.  That's kind of a deflating diagnosis after all the build up, isn't it?

But the voice.  I got my jolt of inspiration!  And I think that's maybe even more important than the car being ok.  It helps me rebuild the feelings of trust that God actually hears my prayers and cares enough to intercede with these tiny, practical, and hugely helpful personal revelations.  I have an acquaintance who records these tiny evidences of heavenly communication and calls them HFS.  Heavenly Father Stories.  I thought it was a sweetly quaint throwback to childhood when she talked about them, but doubted I'd ever experience it in my life.  Well... I'm pretty sure this surely would qualify as an HFS!