Everyone who knows me knows that me and cars are not getting along well, so let me tell you a little story about yesterday. I was planning to go to the Men's Breakfast at church but I couldn't sleep the night before, which is fairly normal for me. I ended up getting moving about 9:30 or so and Kat and I decided that we needed to get out of the house. It was time to break out my poor neglected Nikon and head up the Yakima Canyon to see if I could get a couple of shots. I haven't been shooting many pics since I tried to make photography a career and almost ruined one of my favorite hobbies, but that is a story for another day.
After tossing everything into the car we hopped on the road. Unfortunately the flood water wasn't high enough in the canyon for any interesting shots and I didn't see any wildlife that I could get shots of so by the time we were in Ellensburg my camera had yet to leave the case. Not wanting to give up easily I pulled off and grabbed a map on Kat's phone and we decided we were going to take a jaunt up Manastash Road and see what we could find. Quickly we left everything but the occasional farm and were soon in a steep canyon enjoying the trip. The car started to slow on me and I looked down and the tachometer was falling, nothing I could do was getting any power out of the car. Just like that it died and I couldn't get it to run again. Here we were, in the boonies with a broken car and a two-year old who wasn't enjoying sitting in the vehicle while her father was desperately trying to figure out what was wrong.
When the car died we were lucky that a nice couple of ladies stopped and helped me get the thing off the road. However, that was about all the help I could manage to drag out of the occasional passerby. At the one hour mark we made the decision to head out on foot as we were no where close to a cell phone tower. There are a number of farmsteads up there but we couldn't raise anyone for what seemed like forever. By the time we were pretty much exhausted we were deciding if it was worth traipsing through a small community that looked empty when we saw someone in a van drive up to get her mail. It took a small amount of debating but by that time we were desperate, we walked down to her house.
She was a little reluctant to let us in but when she saw Kat struggling to keep up she relented. The poor girl is 32 weeks pregnant and she marched along suffering pains that I can only imagine. I called Gene and he arranged for Nate to come up and get us. For the hour or so it took for them to get there we sat and talked about family and the Kittitas Valley. It turned into a very nice visit and a good experience. She bid us well and told us to come back by when the situation wasn't so dire and that is an offer we just might take her up on. We didn't get the car towed back until after midnight but now it is just a matter of finding out what is wrong.
On the way back I had some time to reflect on God. I don't think that it was His will to leave us where we were but the Enemy's instead. In the Bible the word Satan means adversary and from what I have seen there are many more than just one "Satan." My wife and I have felt for sometime now that there has been a negative influence in our life. Through God we are managing to cut it's hold from us but there are still times that it manifests itself in very horrible ways. It could also be God telling me to get my health together, lose weight and get in shape. Trust me, that is definitely something my aching body took from yesterdays forced death march.
I posted on Facebook a couple days ago about the power of positive thinking. Never yesterday did I despair. I was walking with God and trusting him to protect me and my family. His strength helped carry us forward and in the process we met a very wonderful family. It was a very pretty trip and the weather was nice. It taught us both that we were not taking as good of care of our bodies as we should. There is always a reason for things and there is always a silver lining. Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote, "that which does not kill us, makes us stronger." Yesterday was a prime example of that. No matter what you go through you can either despair or look to the lessons it teaches you and try to put them to work in your daily life. I wish I could post a couple pictures of the trip but after all of that I never managed to get the camera out of it's case! Oh well, at least it is yet another interesting Luther story. Our life is many things but boring isn't one of them!
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