One Bad Week - Tales from TN Part 3

NOTE: If you have not already read "Welcome to TN - Tales from TN Part 1" and "Life Happens All at Once - Tales from TN Part 2", then this post will not make much sense.

Being locked out of my car and apartment on Tuesday night was not how I had planned to spend my evening. It was really an eerie feeling to be locked out from where it was safe and to have no one that I knew to turn to for help. But I was determined to learn from it and move on. Once I got inside I called my mom and told her all about it. We even laughed about it, because it was over. One bad day does not make a bad week.

Wednesday

The next day I was driving to the church I had been visiting. There were a couple of different ways to get there and I was still trying to figure out which one was faster. I noticed a police car behind me so I naturally checked my speed. I was fine. He stayed behind me for about 2 more miles and exited when I exited. By then I was kind of wondering if he was following me. I knew for a fact that I had NOT been speeding so I was hoping he just happened to be headed the same direction. 

Wrong. I saw the lights start to flash. Since no one else was around I knew he wanted me to pull over even though I was clueless as to why. I pulled over but I was getting upset. I couldn't imagine why he was pulling me over! I had never been pulled over before and I knew I wasn't speeding and I didn't want to be late for church!

He stood behind my car for the longest five minutes of my life. And when he walked up and I rolled my window down he told me that I was free to go. He had been looking at my temporary tags and initially thought that they were expired. I guess in OK (where I bought the car) they wrote the tags with the purchase date and they were good for 30 days from that point. In TN, the practice was to write the date that the tags expire. So he thought they were out-of-date when really they were just out-of-state.

When he left and I was finishing my drive to church I was able to laugh, a strange relieved kind of laugh, but laughter none the less. It was upsetting but it was over and I enjoyed telling the church people about it that night.

Still two odd things in two days... I hoped that I was done with craziness for a while. But it was only Wednesday. The week was only half way through.

Thursday

Thursday morning I headed down the stairs to go to work. I turn the key and grrrrr...grrrrrr. Uh oh! My brand-new car won't start! Since my headlights don't turn off automatically, I thought that I must have left the headlights on all night and drained the battery down. I was pretty irritated with myself. But thankfully I had been planning on leaving early so I still had time to call a coworker and get a ride to work.

After work some guy coworkers who knew more about cars that I did came over to look at it. I was hoping it was just the battery had drained down. They were able to help me get it jumped and I drove it around for a while to try to give it time to recharge the battery some.

Although this problem was probably the least stressful and also easily fixed, it was especially annoying since I thought it was my entirely my own stupid fault. (This wasn't the last time the battery would die, but it was the first. Turned out that the battery was defective and I ended up getting it replaced a few weeks later.)

Friday

Nothing unusual happened that Friday. It was nice. After all of the crazy, frustrating, scary, and stressful things that had happened the last three days it was nice to get back to normal.

Saturday

I was off from LensCrafters so I decided to spend the morning relaxing and then make a grocery run. I even decided to try out a new grocery store rather than driving to the closest "nice" Wal-Mart. Everything was going well. Prices were great. I liked the store. I even got a phone call from my sister and was enjoying taking my time shopping and catching up with her.

Eventually I paid for everything and headed out to my car. As I was walking up, I thought that something looked funny about my car. "Why does it look different?" I suddenly realized it was because my temporary tags were missing! They were just gone! Stolen! After the week I had, this was the last straw! (When a co-worker's tags were stolen the same day my temp tag expired a week later, we figured that it was stolen in the parking lot at work, on the Friday that I thought nothing bad had happened.)

I was furious! And scared. I drove home very carefully praying the whole time that I wouldn't get pulled over a second time in one week. I remember clenching my teeth and straining to hold back the tears that threatened to blind me while I was driving. I brokenly told the Lord that I felt that I had reached my limit for one week and begged Him to show me mercy by not letting me be pulled over. 

I made it home undisturbed. My peaceful, relaxed Saturday was spent with me filing a police report and trying to get the dealership in OKC to overnight me new temp tags (which never came). Thankfully I had already planned on taking it to get it registered Monday morning. So I only had Sunday that I couldn't legally drive it.

My God was and is ever gracious. He knew my limits better than I did and had no plans to allow me to face more than I could handle. He was trying to grow me (not crush me) and wanted teach me to rely on His strength. Through it all He was teaching me to turn to Him first, to make prayer my immediate response to a trial.

Sometimes He has to strip away all outside help to force us to look to Him for help. Sometimes He has to pile on frustration after frustration to wear out our own strength so that we realize we need His. Sometimes He has to let things become scary so that we realize He is our protection.

I learned a lot during that week. Most of it is pretty funny to me now. But because of the things I learned and the ways it grew me, I wouldn't change a thing.

Life Happens All at Once - Tales from TN Part 2

Note: If you have not yet read "Welcome to TN - Tales from TN Part 1" I suggest that you go back and read it first...

So, I have a little piece of advice - don't buy your first car, graduate from college, "move" home for two weeks, find an apartment sight-unseen, move cross-country to a city where you know no one, and start a new job all within a month! Trying to sort out the registration, TT & L, and insurance for a new car while involving three different states is not the simplest thing in the world to do. Picking an apartment from several states away is not easy either, especially when you have a limited window of time to move in and no backup plan if the one you choose turns out to be awful. Life was rather complicated doing all of those things at one time but somehow with lots of prayer, good advice, a few panicked moments, some faith, and some more prayer that's exactly what I had done.

(Yes, panicked moments. I know, I know. I can hear the scoffing and see self-righteous raised eyebrows. How 'bout you try not to panic when the apartment you are sure God has led you to live in declines your application because you have no rental history. I dare you! Then tell me you don't feel the sweet relief that comes when they call back 15 minutes later to say that their policy had recently changed to allow new graduates to waive that requirement.)

My first couple of weeks flew by in a little bit of a happy blur. I know I worked on unpacking and getting settled into my apartment. I had two first days in one when I started working at my new editing job and the eyeglass store where I had transferred from OK.  I also continued to visit the church that I had found my first Sunday night in Nashville. And Andrea was there for most of the first week sight-seeing, helping me unpack, and just being company after my mom went home.

Isn't it strange how it seems life happens all at once? One day you are confidently cruising along on the still, calm sea of life and then whoosh - a storm arrives and everything happens all at once. The wind is howling and kicking up waves that crash wildly against the sides of the rocking boat. Flashes of lightening nearly blind you and the thunder is deafening. That's pretty much what happened to me my third week.

Tuesday

I had to stay about 30 minutes late for a training session. When I got home, I thought about how my dad had told me to check the oil every couple of times I filled up my car. I realized I hadn't checked it recently and decided to just check it "real quick" right then. I left the car door open and all of my stuff in the front seat so my hands were free. While I was checking the oil, a neighbor drives up and I realized I was blocking the parking space next to me with my open car door. So I closed it.

As soon as I did, I felt a sick, sinking feeling in my stomach. I had found myself locking my door while I opened it. I didn't even realize when I was doing it. Had I locked it? Yes, I had. My keys were sitting right there on the front seat in plain sight. I thought, "That's OK, I have a spare in the apartment... which is locked. And the keys to my apartment are in my car... which is locked."

I ran over to the apartment office as fast as I could in my fancy suit jacket and heels to get them to unlock my apartment. However, due to the fact that this was the ONE night I would ever need to stay late, I got there 15 minutes after they had closed for the night. On to plan B.

I had roadside assistance that came with the warranties on my car. I thought, "I will just call ...no one." My cell phone was in the car next to the keys. So Plan C became to find a phone to call my mom (because she was the only person whose number I had memorized) to get her to look up the number for the roadside assistance. I knew about 5 or 6 of my coworkers lived in the same apartments. I thought maybe I could remember one of their apartment numbers. After nearly an hour of trudging around on what turned out to be the hottest day of the whole summer and after knocking on three wrong doors, plan D became to beg my own neighbors for the use of their phone.

By this point my pleas to God for help were becoming more desperate, but He heard me and was gracious. I found a neighbor who was home and didn't look like the murderous type. She let me use her phone and even sit inside in the air conditioning to wait for help to arrive. It took an hour and a half for the guy to get there but only two minutes to get into my car. I was quite relieved that the ordeal was over.

It was over for the night but not for the week. The week was just getting started.

Welcome to TN - Tales from TN Part 1

Have you ever had something happen that at the time made you so frustrated that you wanted to cry, pull your hair out, scream, stay in bed for a day or two, or maybe "run home to Mommy," but then later all you can do is laugh about it all? For me, that was my entire first month in Nashville, TN.

I moved to Nashville after graduating from college because I had been hired by a curriculum company to work as an editor/proofreader. I had only visited one time for my interview and even then I spent less than 24 hours in Nashville. So needless to say, it was all brand new to me! And it didn't take long for trouble to find me... A little less than 12 hours to be exact.

I arrived in Nashville in my new little white 2 door hatchback Hyundai Accent that my sister had lovingly dubbed "Lily." I had managed to purchase it, my very first vehicle, during the last two weeks before I graduated, so I had only owned it about a month.

Arriving with me in Nashville was my friend Andrea, who had taken her vacation time to help me move and enjoy some time away from OKC. My mom and her friend Nelda had also come with me and had driven the U-haul. We located and stayed the night in the hotel. So far, so good. Everything was going smoothly.

The next morning we all decided to test my new GPS (the best birthday/graduation gift ever and definitely a lifesaver for this directionally challenged girl in a brand new city) and find a coffee shop so we could get some coffee and breakfast.

First location: non-existent. No big deal. The next one was only a mile away... It ended up taking me into the heart of downtown Nashville which is full of hills, one-way streets, seemingly countless stoplights, tons of traffic, and zero parking spaces. I managed to find the coffee shop, but I did not manage to find a parking space. So there I was, my GPS going full-blast saying "recalculating" with three people making suggestions about where to go to try to find parking close by. I stopped at yet another red light.

I checked my rearview mirror only to see to my horror that the car behind me is getting closer and closer. I cannot pull forward any further because I have a car in front of me. I only have enough time to say, "Uh oh" while my racing thoughts screamed, "Please stop. Please stop. PLEASE stop." It didn't. I had been rear-ended. In my brand new Lily! On my first day in town!

The offenders were nice out-of-towners who were also trying to navigate the labyrinth they call downtown Nashville. Sadly, they were paying more attention to the street signs than their brake pedal. Their car had only been creeping along and it was also white like my little Lily so thankfully there was no discernible damage.

I was not discouraged. I knew that I was exactly where God wanted me. I was finally finished with college, moving to a new and exciting city, starting a new and exciting job, getting my very first apartment, driving my new first car... Life was all about the new, the different, and the exciting. Perhaps with such a welcome, I should have been a little more prepared for the insanity that would follow during my first month. But at that point, I was still blissfully unaware of all that was in store.