God Drives a Tow Truck (21 page)

“It’s behind the dresser!” I choked, my voice broken with heaving sobs. He raced into the room and wrenched the dresser from against the wall. The snake huddled and coiled, and Arvo wedged it against the wall with his putter.

“Get the pliers,” he commanded.

I will not go into detail, but he dispatched the snake with channel pliers, which is all I could find. Asherel was sobbing now, calling out, “Is he ok?”
“Your father is fine!” I called back.

“Not him,” she cried, “The snake!”

When the exterminators arrived shortly thereafter, they set traps and poison and mouse bombs, and within a few days, our house was quiet and vermin free. I cleaned Matt’s room furiously, and found a stash of corn under his bed, the half eaten remains of a microwavable toe warmer bag.

I would like to say that this experience led to Matt recognizing the need for a clean room, an organized environment, an awareness that little sins lead to massive repercussions. I cannot, as that would be lying. However,
I
certainly saw the lesson. There is a good reason why God warns us that we should not murder, but even calling our brother “fool” brings on the fire of hell. Sin has a way of starting small and building exponentially. A pile of laundry becomes a copperhead in your hallway. I certainly was sitting up and taking notice.

Exodus 28:35
The sound of the bells will be heard when he enters the Holy Place before the LORD

Everything was being slowly buried under a thick yellow layer of pollen here in Charlotte. It was nonetheless pleasant to gaze at the beauty of spring erupting, if I could excavate a place to sit in the mounds of yellow dust. The trees were all in full bloom, the lime spring grass was healthy, for the few weeks left before the sun magnified its efforts to kill it. Azalea and irises were parading their glorious petals. Ah spring! Ah-choo!
Inside, we were slowly being buried by layers of other things. With the end of school in sight, and both Matt's college graduation and Asherel's Global Destination Imagination Finals in the next five weeks, we seemed to never sit down. Every surface was slowly being covered with things we would put away "soon". The clutter was beginning to overwhelm me as effectively as the pollen. Soon better come...soon.
Asherel was busily adding to the clutter preparing for the Global Finals. She had to make a duct tape hat for Opening Ceremonies. She generously made my hat, as coach of the team, and then settled in the midst of the pile of supplies to work on her own hat. She had very specific visions of what the hats should look like. After perusing her supplies, she asked me to pick up three "jingle bells".

“And not the little kind. I need large jingle bells.”

“Can you substitute something we already have?” I begged. I had a list a mile long of all I needed to do in the next five weeks.

“No, Mom, I have to have jingle bells.”

I am an artist myself. I know what it is to have a vision of what a creation needs to look like. Imagine if God had substituted a horn instead of a nose. We would all look like a rhinoceros. With a sigh, I went to look for jingle bells.

Jingle bells are impossible to find in mid-summer, I discovered. I went to every store I could think of that might carry them, to no avail. Finally, I went to the nearby dollar store, the last store that might carry jingle bells with Christmas still seven months away. I asked the woman dusting the aisles if they carried jingle bells. The woman did not speak English.
"Jingle bells?" I repeated, slowly, carefully.
She looked confused and said, "Everything dollar!"
I pantomimed a jingle bell jingling and tried again, carefully enunciating.
She listened intently and then brought me to the aisle with ice-cream toppers.
"Not sprinkles," I said, "Jingle bells... like on elf hats?"
"Everything dollar!"
So I headed home without jingle bells. Jingle bells were only one worry for that day. We needed Asherel’s room as a guest room for next week’s visitor. While Asherel was busy with the hat in the sunroom, I began to tackle the clutter in her bedroom. I slowly began clearing a path through her room. I moved a pile of craft supplies- scissors, glue, yarn, beads, and glitter- from an end table, carefully boxing them and putting the neatly labeled box in the closet. Returning to the now clean end table, I stopped and blinked. There on the edge of the table, lay jingle bells... three large jingle bells.

I had
just
cleared that table. There had been
no
jingle bells on the table twenty seconds earlier. Asherel was still tinkering with her hat in the adjoining sunroom. I heard duct tape being ripped from its roll.

I picked up the jingle bells and walked out to her.

“Very funny,” I said, handing her the jingle bells.
"Where did you buy these?" she asked.
I narrowed my eyes, and tilted my head. "They were in your room...you don't know where they came from?"
She shook her head, "No... no idea."
We looked at each other.

“You didn’t just put them on the table?” I asked.

“Mom, I have been working here all morning. You know that. I wouldn’t have told you to buy them if I had some. These are perfect, though…thanks.”
"How many did you need for your hat?" I asked.
"Three," she answered looking down at the three shiny jingle bells in her hand.
Maybe some of you think I am lying, and the rest of you think I am crazy. At least, I have a witness. If you don't believe
me
, ask Asherel. She insists she never left the sunroom, and she had no jingle bells, or she wouldn’t have asked me to buy them. I saw the clean table, and a moment later, I saw the jingle bells on the table.

I have asked God for many things over the years, some heart-breaking requests have gone unanswered. Despite my prayers, friends have died, leaving beloved children alone. Cancer has ravaged the bodies of men and women who seek God just as ardently as I. Floods have covered the homes of loved ones, wiping out their savings. Disease has knocked at the health of family members, until they feel such despair that they are not sure they can muster hope any more.

Why
this
prayer, such an inconsequential thing that I didn't even exactly pray for, was answered so exactly, I don't know. If I were God, my priorities might be a little different. As I watched Asherel complete the exquisitely beautiful duct tape hat, and shake her head so the jingle bells tinkled, I wondered at the inexplicable nature of God.

I know God is always there, and always speaking. I just am not always hearing what He is trying to say. If such a tiny request, such an unimportant aspect of our life as those jingle bells did indeed register in Heaven, perhaps I can trust that He is in control of
every
detail. If His love extends to satisfy the desire of a little girl to make a thing of beauty to perfectly match her vision, then surely those other seemingly unanswered prayers were considered with love, as well. I can’t understand why He moves in our lives the way He does, but I think He is telling me that I can trust He hears me. Maybe it really is possible that every hair on my head is counted, even when covered with a duct tape hat with jingle bells on it.

Chapter 33

Now is the Day of Salvation

Isaiah 35:10

… everlasting joy will crown their heads.
Gladness and joy will overtake them,
   and sorrow and sighing will flee away.

The true story of rescuing a dying dog that then tried to kill our sweet dog Lucky was the basis of my first serious attempt at writing a book. The story had all the elements of a great book, I thought. A pitiful sad creature is rescued by people totally ill-equipped to deal with the ensuing issues of severe aggression. I repeatedly try to hoist the dog off on someone else, without having to resort to sending her to be killed by Animal Control. A Rescue Farm contacts me, and with straight forward “tough love” tells me I need to either euthanize the dog, or heal her, but passing this problem off to someone else is criminal. And if I want help, call them. After ranting and raving, I contact the Rescue Farm, and the next year is spent working closely with them rehabilitating the dog to a final, victorious conclusion. I get teary eyed just thinking about that story. It is the most miraculous story of God’s messages and interventions in my daily life that I have, but I will not tell it in this book. It deserves, and has, a book of its own.

When I finished the dog book, I proudly sent it off to several publishers. Like nearly every other endeavor in my life, I didn’t bother to research in depth the right way to publish a book. I felt the book was so magnificent that I would easily bypass the struggles of every other new author on earth. In fact, I emailed my proposal and then sat by the phone, with a smile on my face and several pens nearby to sign all the dotted lines of the contracts that would be pouring in within minutes.

It was a long and lonely and discouraging wait. While I did immediately garner interest, and many agents wrote back, the comments were not begging to let them fly me out instantly on their private jet to discuss movie rights. The book was “heart warming but not polished,” or “too Christian” or “not Christian enough” or “wonderful story but not for me”, or my personal favorite, “beautifully written, with humor and verve, but I cannot with enthusiasm represent this project.” (?) I did wonder what kind of projects then she
would
represent with enthusiasm.

I tried to swallow my considerable pride and not grow discouraged. Before writing to a new batch of agents, I waited until the first batch of ten had responded. All were rejections in various forms. Some were kind. Some were obviously form letters. Some, surprisingly, gave me specific suggestions. I really appreciated those agents. I instantly went back into my book and began editing per their recommendations. The book began to develop “polish and craft”.

After a month of editing, I sent the book query letter off to a new batch of twenty agents. This time, a few asked for formal proposals and sample chapters. Out of this batch, two asked for the full manuscript. Again, I bought champagne and picked out a new dress for my television interviews. While it took a little longer this time, all came back eventually as rejections, with a new set of reasons why I didn’t make the cut. A depressing common theme was the book publishing economy stunk now, and no one was taking a chance on an unknown author.

After this depressing result, I wrote to my sister in despair and told her I was giving up. No one wanted to publish my book, and I could not edit it anymore, and I just wanted to crawl into my coffee cup and drown myself in caffeine. She told me that the same perseverance that had helped me heal the little dog of my book was the character quality I needed to call on now to publish this book. She told me to keep trying, and write to more agents.

So I got a longer list of agents and this time sent out one hundred query letters. This time, I pretended not to be sitting by the computer waiting for a response. I continued rewriting and revising, cutting out whole chapters that didn’t keep the story progressing in a riveting manner. It was like pulling toenails off my baby, but I kept at it.

This batch of responses was even more encouraging. Several agents requested the whole book again. I sent it off with much prayer. A few months later, everyone had again written back, with rejections, though this time they seemed to genuinely feel bad that they had to reject it. The book was edging closer to being publishable, but the agents uniformly said a secular publishing house would likely never accept this strongly religious book. If I had been writing about vampires, or the occult, yes, then I had a best seller. Perhaps I could change the focus to Satanic possession of the little dog?