Last Friday our 1999 mini-van completely stopped working as Mark pulled into a parking lot. Like dead, no power, no power steering, nothing. The car behind nearly rear-ended him.
So we had the car towed to our favorite mechanic, but of course it was near closing time on Friday and they wouldn’t be open again until Tuesday.
We made it through the weekend on one car – just meant that we all couldn’t go anywhere together.
Tuesday around 11 the mechanic called. “I’ve got bad news. Your timing belt broke. It costs about $500 to repair. Problem is that 8 out of 10 times when the timing belt breaks the push rods also get bent. That’s a $2,500 repair. But there’s no way to know if the push rods are bent unless you fix the timing belt.”
UGH!
Obviously he knew that our van was not worth sinking $2,500 into. So basically we were left with a decision. Do we spend the money to fix the timing belt with no guarantee that would fix the problem? Or would it be wiser to call the van DOA and use that $500 toward its replacement?
Normally it might not be that big of a deal, but Mark is still job hunting and the thought of having to spend $4,000-5,000 on a new van put a pit in my stomach. His too, I’m sure.
But 8 out of 10? That’s not very good odds.
Over lunch we weighed our options. Finally we decided that God was going to provide one way or the other. Either by having protected the push rods or, if the van did need to be replaced, by providing what we needed.
In the end we felt like we needed to take a leap of faith and let God show up big time. We called the mechanic and told him to fix the timing belt. He gave Mark one of those “Oooookay….” as in “I think your nuts.”
Then we started calling and texting our circle of friends and telling them to pray for our van 🙂
We put some serious prayer into that van, as did our friends and our kids. Trust me, they don’t like being squished in the back seat of the Camry.
Of course we had to wait until the next day. But the mechanic called and said, “I’ve got good news. You got lucky!”
Mark told him it wasn’t luck, that we were praying for that miracle big time.
I’ve never been so grateful for my little van that keeps on going….
Glad things worked out in your favor. Personally, I would rather put $1-2 thousand dollars into my car every year until it won’t go any more than to have to purchase a new one. I hate spending money sometimes.
I’m right there with you. We had just put $1,000 into it before we left on a extended road trip. It’s always sad when they reach that breaking point where it just doesn’t pay anymore. Glad we’ll get some more miles out of this one (it’s at 150,000 already) 🙂