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"Hurrah! It's moving day!" Even the overcast sky didn't dampen our enthusiasm. 

In our early thirties with two preschoolers, we had just bought our first house. Oh, the excitement! Our furniture had been unloaded, but something had delayed the delivery of our new refrigerator. It was the early 1970s—pre-cell-phone years—and our phones were being installed later, however I was impatient about my refrigerator. Monty was assembling our beds, so I left the boys with him and drove our 1965 Ford Galaxie 500 to the appliance store to enquire about our missing refrigerator.

This rainy and foggy Arkansas day lowered visibility in our hilly Ozark town. I signaled a left turn when I spotted the appliance store to my left. As I turned left, crossing the highway into the parking lot, a sudden metallic crashing sound accompanied my car being lurched into a spin. Stunned, when I managed to extricate myself from the car, I found that people had spilled out of cars and stores nearby to check on me. The speeding pickup that hit me was traveling in the same direction. He had topped the hill and swerved to pass me before realizing I was turning left across the highway and into his path. When he hit the brakes, his vehicle spun around and crashed into the rear of my car. The back of his truck crumpled my sedan's trunk like wadded paper.

When onlookers realized no one was hurt, they snickered about my vehicle's appearance. 

"Looks like a wrecking ball fell out of the sky!" 

"Yeah, crushed the trunk but left the rest intact." 

"Lucky for her, the policeman told her it's still drivable.”

At the time, I didn't see any humor in the situation.

Some people say, "When it rains, it pours." Three days later, a violent thunderstorm with large golf ball-sized hail fell mainly in our neighborhood. It destroyed the old roof of our new-to-us home.

A lumberman had built our three-story brick home about 1900. Knowing it was already over seventy years old, we had set aside money to begin fixing the many things that needed work. Of course, now I wanted to use some of that money to repair the car. However, Monty had a strong argument that replacing the roof took precedence over the car—or my long list of other things I wanted to do. I was not happy.

The first week of home ownership had proven traumatic. The following Saturday morning, my husband disappeared outside, and loud banging sounds told me he was working on the car. Since the only damage involved the luggage area, he used a sledgehammer to flatten the mangled trunk area. He was making a flatter base for the two metal tripods—sort of like a camera or surveyor's tripod—that he intended to place on each side where our brake lights should be. Next, he drilled holes in that flattened metal to ensure water could drain out. After attaching the two tripods, Monty secured one of the two red brake lights he had purchased at the top of each tripod. 

When I looked out, he was busy wiring those red lights into the car's braking system. Unfortunately, I only saw two red lights—like eyes—seemingly suspended in space and gazing at me. I gasped in disbelief at the two red eyes leering back at me.

"It looks like a bug-eyed monster!”

"I had to do something," he pointed out. "The car wouldn't pass state inspection without rear lights.”

Reluctantly, I admitted it was an ingenious solution. "That's probably the funniest and ugliest thing I've ever seen. But," I hedged, "surely you don't expect me to drive it looking like that?" 

His silence only increased my anxiety. "Do you?”

"Well, Hon, it's either drive it like this or walk. We don't have the money to fix it or get another car right now.”

Remembering we had agreed before marriage to not borrow money for anything except a house, I sighed in resignation. My pride was being trampled, but honoring our commitment was more important than my ego. I kept my mouth shut, but inwardly I struggled.

About a week later, my Bible study was on thankfulness. It included I Thessalonians 5:18, which indicated it was God's will for me to have a thankful attitude. That was not what I wanted to hear—especially now! I felt stressed every time I thought about that scripture and its meaning. Surely, God doesn't mean for me to be thankful for a broken roof and smashed car! But—I reasoned—I would be a hypocritical phony to say I believe scripture and then not keep its explicit instruction. But how? How can I be thankful when I don't “feel” thankful? 

By now, my salty tears were splashing in my dishwater. I sank to my knees on my kitchen floor and asked God to forgive my prideful attitude. I wanted to obey Christ but didn't "feel" thankful. So I decided to thank God for the broken roof and battered car out of obedience and not feelings. Then, hesitantly, I added, "… if it isn't asking too much, Lord, would you mind giving me a glimpse of how these things are for my good like the scripture says in Romans 8:28." Getting up from my knees, I wondered if I would ever know…but somehow, it didn't matter now because I had such a feeling of peace about it.

Days later, I was again working on my Bible study regarding being thankful and thinking about the wreck. It was then that I had an extraordinary experience. The entire car wreck replayed three times in quick succession in my imagination. Initially, it played out as I remembered it. However, the second time, I saw it as if I were hovering above, looking down on the scene—only this time, I noticed that the truck didn't spin. It hit me broadside at high speed, killing me instantly and leaving my children motherless. I recoiled in horror. “I COULD HAVE BEEN KILLED!”

Immediately, the scene began replaying in my mind a third time, again from an elevated vantage point. Something was causing that pickup to spin so the truck bed hit the trunk of my car! My whole perspective instantly changed with the realization that had the truck not rotated, I probably would have been killed—and here I was moaning about the appearance of my car. The damage to the car suddenly seemed trivial compared to the catastrophe God had spared us.

Not long afterward, the boy carrying my groceries to my car at the supermarket nearly dropped them when he spied my bug-eyed car. 

"Gosh, lady! Was anyone killed? What on earth happened?”

"I could have been killed," I told him. "I'm so thankful God saw fit to spare my life.”

Over the following months, people often stopped me on the sidewalk or walked across the street to ask what on earth happened to our car—and I would answer similarly. Then, of course, many wanted to hear the whole story, and we would get into a discussion. By the time we bought another vehicle, everyone in our small Arkansas town had seen and learned about our strange bug-eyed monster car.

After the grocery clerk encounter, I told my husband, "I can finally see good coming from the car wreck. Recently, I prayed for boldness in witnessing and sharing God's love with strangers. Today, I realized God found an unusual way to help me do that.”

Monty smiled across the room at me. "We also received blessings from the roof damage because of the timing. The hailstorm forced me to buy shingles and new decking immediately. The prices rose substantially just a few days afterward! The timing of the storm forced us to buy at a cheaper price. Also, since the roof was damaged after we moved into the house, our insurance is helping pay some of the cost—even though it was an old roof already needing replacement. You could say the hailstorm saved us a lot of money in the long term.”

"Now," he smiled, with a twinkle in his eyes, "it looks like we can do some of the things you've planned for the house, and we'll be able to replace our car sooner than we had thought.”

Suddenly, I was flooded with joyful thanksgiving, and it wasn't simply out of obedience this time. God had shown me how He could bring good out of the wreck and the demolished roof. I found it reassuring that what looked like two catastrophes at first had turned out to benefit us in unexpected ways.

1 Thessalonians 5:18 Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. (ESV)

Romans 8:28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. (ESV)