**Note** I wrote this back at the end of June but am just now publishing it…oops

Sometimes it just doesn’t stop….the last week of our after school program, and the week before we were scheduled to get some much needed rest up on Cape Cod, it felt like a hurricane of trials hit us.  On top of me feeling burned out and overwhelmed by all the responsibilities I had somehow accumulated, we had some major incidents as follow:

Thursday afternoon, we were trying to give a young man in the neighborhood some work to do in order to earn a few bucks (he was recently out of prison and its REALLY hard to get a job once you’ve been locked up).  So we said we’d pay him to clean out our car, upon which he enthusiastically asked if he could back the car up so that the vacuum would reach.  Danny was running out the door, and had given him the key, and i was in a fog of fatigue and desperately trying to prepare for the after school program.
In the confusion we let him back the car up, despite the fact (we later found out) that we both had major premonitions about it.  So, I take a quick break from my work to stand on the back porch and guide him as he backed up.  Praise God, Daniel Josiah was on the porch with me.  This is what happened:  He started to back up with the drivers door open, and as he reversed, it was slowly denting into another van in the parking lot with our car door being bent in the wrong direction.  I repeatedly told him to stop the car, gradually getting louder as he didn’t quite catch on.  I end up yelling to him “Stop the Car!!” as he panics and slammed on the accelerator.  I watched in slow but very fast motion as he speeds backwards,  slams THROUGH our metal garbage shed, knocks over our iron cast fence around the property, lodges the car on the middle pole of the fence, and digs a big hole with the front wheel as his foot is STILL on the accelerator. At this point, I can’t quite believe what I just witnessed, Daniel Josiah is frantically crying and I start shaking uncontrollably.  I WOULD like to note some “praise God”s- No one got hit, no one was behind the fence on the sidewalk, he hit the pole and didn’t continue through the fence and out onto the road, and again DANIEL JOSIAH WAS WITH ME! Also, this individual experienced GRACE like he had never experienced before.  Afterwards (when all the firetrucks and bystanders had arrived) he pulled me aside and continued to say “I’m sooo sorry, I completely understand if you don’t want me to come around here any more.” But, of course, we forgave him and didn’t punish him away as he is used to experiencing) So we managed to get the car dislodged from the pole (I climbed over the garbage shed into the front door, and the firemen lifted the back up as i slowly drove forward).  The door re-bent in the correct direction (but is stuck open still) and we had to call it a day.

THAT very night, someone bashed in the back window of Danny’s dad’s car and attempted to steal it out of the parking lot.

Early the next morning, Danny was at Ju ji tsu and pulled his back out rendering him in MUCH pain and inability to walk.

The following day I had to coordinate all of our youth choir and their involvement in a production at the Prudential Center ( a huge deal for the kids) That ended up taking basically all day and didn’t get done picking up people and dropping them off until midnight.

Sunday, I stumbled through Children’s Church, cancelled Sunday School, packed the car up, took Danny to our amazing chiropractor friend (THANKS DREW!) and hit the road for Cape Cod. (Where I soon found out that I had gotten lice from one of the kids in the ministry)

After all these ordeals, and a time of quiet on Cape Cod, I distinctly felt the Lord leading me to take a break from all ministry commitments for the summer….soon I would find out why….