Four Dogs, Crab Legs, and a Car Fire…OH MY

It just wouldn’t be me if something outrageous didn’t happen on or around my birthday. As a kid, I would spend some birthdays sitting in the hospital waiting room when my Nannie was sick. Other times, I had parties that ended up making me question why I wanted to have parties, like the time I tried to use a Magic 8 ball as a crystal ball. I was about 10 or 11 years old and was having a slumber party with several friends, one of whom had lost her dad to cancer when she was about 6 years old. We had the bright idea to use the Magic 8 ball to “perform a seance.” You know, like Scooby Doo style. About the time we had the lights off and we asked for the ghosts to make themselves known, we heard a loud crash. My dog had ran past a door that was propped against the porch, causing it to fall and scaring him senseless. When the door fell, he jumped up against the door with a howl that could wake the dead. Needless to say, I’ve never performed another seance.

As I grew older birthday parties seemed to have a strong significance in my life and I longed to have a carefree party where everything went magically as planned. I’ve had luau’s, fiesta’s, bonfires, barbeque’s, fish fries, you name it…I’ve planned them all. They haven’t always gone as planned for one reason or another but perhaps that is what has encouraged  spontaneity in my life. Nonetheless, I continue to think that I can pull these things off each year.

For my thirtieth birthday, I planned a big fish fry and invited a ton of people. The day before the party, I was driving to work feeling just fine. I was having a good hair day and I was looking forward to picking up my iced coffee on the way into work. What else could happen but BAM! I look up and there’s a car headed straight for me and she had just caused the car in front of me to flip. That’s an oh, you know what moment! Thankfully, I wasn’t hurt too badly, mainly shook up and stiff. But unfortunately for my party, I was not in the celebrating kind of mood. My car was smashed and battered and I was sore like someone had beaten the crap out of me. I normally make my own birthday cake–because I can’t stand a store-bought cake–but because of my situation I had to suffer through a store bought cake.

 

Then, in it’s usual fashion, this year’s birthday drama started. Actually, it started about a week early with the addition of one more dog into our already crowded two dog family. It sounds pretty redneck but…as we pulled into Wal-mart last weekend there was a man selling bassett hound puppies off the back of his truck. My husband just wanted to “look” but when the man offered to give him the mama dog free, my husband (and kids) overpowered me with their sad eyes and begging. My husband had always wanted a basset hound and he had been a good boy that week so I agreed to allow the dog to come home. This would mean that I would have to wait for my “lap dog” but I didn’t realize the wait wouldn’t be long. Bunny, the temperamental basset hound, thinks that she is a lap dog.

 

And, almost like another crazy birthday present, the man who gave us Bunny called to ask if we would be willing to take on another basset hound. I shook my head and protested to no avail, but I can’t say that I protested too strongly. Lance, the basset hound, was brought into the family to add to Bunny, Lexi, the chocolate lab,  and Belle, the other Wal-mart special. Keep in mind, three of these dogs come and go inside the house and they all shed like someones been shearing sheep in the house. Anytime someone walks quickly through the house, a big poof of dog hair flies up in the air like a cloud.

 

The day before the party, I am encouraged because outside of the addition of two dogs, everything is going as planned. My order of crab legs for the party was on its way and the house was mostly clean. My aunt and cousin came up a little early so that we could go shopping and spend some quality time together. I took a few days off from work and was enjoying the break from the paper pushing job. I was happy as a clam.

 

We decided to do a little shopping near Atlanta and I was on a search for Cajun Chef hot sauce, which is by far the best hot sauce made on the planet. A friend had told me that a store near the Farmer’s Market sold the sauce by the gallon. I went on a quest for hot sauce and upon finding it, I just had to buy a gallon for my friend and before it was said and done, I bought four gallons. We joked on the way to the car about buying hot sauce on such a hot day. Much to our chagrin, it was going to get quite a bit hotter.

 

As we were on our way back home, I noticed that my car was making a funny noise but I thought it was because we had six people and four gallons of hot sauce in the car. Passing through several traffic lights, we commented on the fire fighters raising money in the median. “I hate that they have to raise money like this! This is a shame!” I commented. I didn’t have a dime on me to donate to their cause but it didn’t take long for them to prove their worth to me. Upon stopping for a red light, I watched the fire fighters as they went from car to car as people dropped money in their boots. When the light turned green and I hit the accelerator, the car didn’t move. In south Atlanta traffic, you don’t sit at green lights so I began to panic that I would be smashed to bits. I tried to shift gears but it went nowhere. I turned the car off and back on again in hopes that it was an electrical fluke. When I started the engine, a small cloud of smoke came out from under the hood. My first thoughts were of a blown motor or overheating but that was before the giant plume of smoke and flames whipped out from underneath the hood.

 

We all jumped out of the car faster than lightning and one of the firefighters later commented, “I’ve never seen that many people pile out of a car that fast in all my life!” I was trembling from fear and it took just a moment for the firefighters beside us to realize that something had gone terribly wrong. As I stood by from the median and watched the firefighters work to put the fire out, I couldn’t help but think the birthday curse had struck again. It didn’t take me long to realize that had we been a few miles back up the road, in the heart of heavy traffic, and not been beside a fire truck, that my car would have probably became fully engulfed in flames and exploded.

 

Though my birthday didn’t go quite as planned, I saw God’s work in action. God’s hands work like moving chess pieces. They have done this through the years and will continue to show me his plan. He puts things in our lives for reasons that may not yet be known to us. I kept wondering why there were so many firefighters raising money at those lights and then at the very last light that they were working, my car caught fire. It could have been a light before or a light later, where the fire truck and hoses were not sitting or it could have happened to me on my rural drive to and from work we would have been dependent upon volunteer fire departments. But it didn’t. God moved at exactly the right time for me to be saved. He does this for all of us and through trials we should look at our situation from God’s point of view. Do I know the reason why my car burst into flames? Well, no, even though we joked that it was the hot sauce! Do I know why this just always has to happen on my birthday? Nope, not a clue. But looking back through my life, I can see God’s handiwork through hard times. I am a stronger person because of bad things and I see life from a different perspective than perhaps someone who can pull birthdays off with flair.

 

I see that life is too precious to waste moments in self pity. Am I sad? Yes, of course. God didn’t say that we couldn’t praise Him for His handiwork yet still be hurting. We praise Him through the pain and trust Him to see us through. He  has not failed me yet and I fail to believe that all this happened as a result of chance, I know that God speaks to us in many ways. We have to be willing to listen on his frequency, which doesn’t always come as simple as a conversation. It’s ok to be sad for a loss or a bad situation. What God doesn’t want is for us to be so consumed by the worldly situation that we lose all sight of His plan in this.

 

As we were walking across the street after the firefighters got the fire out, I told one of them that I didn’t have any money on me to put in their boots but I had a gallon of hot sauce. I thanked him for a job well done and handed him the hot sauce. He commented that he didn’t require payment but he sure did appreciate the hot sauce. That’s like how God speaks. He doesn’t require payment but he sure appreciates our obedience.