Miracles Come in All Sizes

I've always thought it was important to teach my children about the power of prayer. I teach them about prayer at mealtimes, I teach them about prayer at bedtime, and lately, as our vehicle disintegrates, I teach them about prayer in the car.

Thursday was a typical babysitting day with my three and my neice and nephew. We're in the middle of some sort of heatwave in the northwest, so it was like 90 degrees outside but felt like over 100 degrees inside. I decided to take the kids to the McDonald's playplace for lunch. It was either that or the lake, and I just didn't feel like the liability that came with taking five kids who don't swim, to a lake. McDonald's went suprisingly smooth, smooth enough I was actually enjoying myself for a quick minute.

On the way home, I stopped at my parent's new house to let the kids run around for an hour. Though the exhaustion of buckling and unbuckling five children into five carseats was starting to get to me, I pressed on because I knew I was coming into the homestretch of the day, and my husband would be home when I got there.

I loaded everyone back into the van to head home. As I backed out of my parent's driveway I heard a sound, a kind of thumping and dragging sound. I checked my mirror to make sure I hadn't left the diaper bag on top of the car, or any children for that matter. Nope, everything looked clear. I proceeded to step on the gas again and heard the noise again. It wasn't until the kids started asking me what the noise was, that I decided to pull over and investigate. To my surprise, my right rear tire was flat, completely flat. Just great. I almost completed this day with no mishaps, no injuries, no major fistfights, and now this.

I headed back towards my parent's house slowly, all the while, trying to appease the interrogation from the kids, as they wanted to know just what was going on. My father checked the tire and we decided to head down to the nearest gas station to try to pump it up. He followed closely behind as I headed down the unpaved, pothole ridden road. I decided to take this opportunity to teach the kids about prayer again (yeah right, I just really needed divine intervention.) I leaned back and said, okay kids, I think we should pray. It wasn't long before I heard an even louder noise, and decided that inflating the tire was a wash at this point...we needed to change the tire. I pulled over to the side and my dad got out in the sweltering heat and began to change my tire.

As my Dad tried with all his might o turn the jack on the uneven, gravel pavement, the kids were inside the van, screaming, fighting