I guess I shouldn't be surprised that God does things differently than I expect.  His ways are, after all, higher than our ways, and His thoughts beyond understanding.  This week, however, He blessed me in a way that I could not have expected, and yet I understand it, at least to some degree.

Okay, enough with the cryptic intro, right?  Awhile back I was driving home when our suburban suddenly stalled in traffic.  Making a very long story short, I had it towed back to my house, but because of the snow we had at the time, the tow truck driver could not get it onto my parking pad in back, and so left it parked on the street in front of my house.  I did not view this as a problem since on street parking is allowed in Minneapolis.  At any rate, I have not been able to ascertain what is wrong with the vehicle and have left it there, though occasionally I have followed suggestions to check this or that or replace a part.  A family in our church has been gracious enough to allow us to use a vehicle they are not using at the moment.  Anyway, this past week it was recommended that I change the fuel pump, even though we had ruled that out earlier.  So, I siphoned out the gas, removed the fuel tank, and replaced the fuel pump.  However, I work a full time job, and it is not at a garage, so this process took me several days. 

Thursday night I was at Men's Bible Study when I got a frantic call from my wife - the city wanted to tow our vehicle and was going to do so as soon as the tow truck arrived.  I begged a friend for help and raced home as fast as I could.  When we arrived we could not talk the traffic cop out of her opinion that our vehicle had been abandoned for more than 72 hours (evidently how long a vehicle is allowed to be parked in one place on the street) or that it was not dangerous (the fuel tank on the ground had her very frightened).  The suburban was on jack stands and as I jacked it up and removed the stands, the tow truck arrived.  This is where I discovered how I had been blessed.  I found out that this was the second tow truck to arrive at our house on Thursday.  The first truck had come in the morning while I was at work and refused to tow our vehicle because of the (detached) fuel tank hanging down!  Not only that, but the second truck that had just arrived had been misinformed as to what type of vehicle they would be towing and were not equipped to tow our vehicle!  This bought my friend, a neighbor, my wife, and I enough time to push the suburban around to the back of our house and on to our parking pad (the snow had melted in the days leading up to this event).  That would have been enough of a blessing, but there was one more thing.  I had needed to remove the rear license plate to access a captive nut that had broken in order to let the fuel tank down.  At the time I had been very frustrated, but the result was that the primary ticket we received from the traffic cop was for failure to display a rear license plate - a ticket, I am told, which is easy to rectify by showing the court officer some proof (like a picture), that the plate has since been installed - kind of like a proof of insurance ticket. 

So, while I was frustrated with a broken nut, and my wife was panicked, and we were ticketed and threatened - in the end our vehicle was not towed, and we will probably not have to pay a large fine, oh, and I finished reattaching everything today!  Isn't God good to us? :)  Please pray that both of our tickets will be dismissed as we are hoping... and remember that God cares for us, answers us, and blesses us - even when we have no idea how.