Tender Mercies

I've decided to start a few new "columns" or regular features on my blog. I'm going to give myself a few general topics and write something about them occasionally. I'm doing this for me, but if some of you enjoy reading it, so much the better. We'll see how it goes. No promises about how often they will crop up. As the title of this post indicates, the first general topic I am introducing is Tender Mercies. The inspiration for this topic comes from two talks given by apostles at General Conference sessions of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The talk by Elder David A. Bednar can be found here. The talk by President Henry B. Eyring can be found here. I know that our Heavenly Father loves us and desires to bless us. And I think it is important to record the times that we recognize those blessings to show our gratitude and also so that we come to recognize our blessings more easily. I also want my children and those around me to come to know for themselves that Heavenly Father loves and blesses them daily.

This morning when I took my kids to school, the van did something it has been doing a lot lately. The first two times I turned the key in the ignition, all I got was a click--nothing. The third time, thankfully, it started as if nothing was wrong. This is particularly frustrating to me because we just had it in the shop a few weeks ago to have this problem fixed and paid a lot of money so that this would quit happening. But having car problems also fills me with gratitude as it reminds me of the many times that my family has been blessed in the area of cars. We have seen literal miracles occur so I can't grumble too much if this is one of those times that a miracle isn't forthcoming. And who knows? Maybe the fact that my van starts at all right now is a miracle. So--since it is on my mind, here is one of the tender mercies we experienced in the past:

When Niles and I got married, I didn't own a car, but thankfully he did. For the first seven years of our marriage, his blue Honda Accord hatchback was our one and only vehicle. After the first few years, the air conditioning on the Honda Accord gave out. It still blew air, but not cold air. We knew it probably had a freon leak that needed to be repaired and then the freon needed to be recharged. But we didn't have the money to do it, and since air conditioning is nice, but not essential, we just lived without it. This really wasn't too much of a burden in the moderate climates of Utah, and then Idaho, where we lived at the time. Every once in a while, on a particularly hot summer day, I would turn on the air conditioning in the hope that it might cool me down a little, but my hopes were in vain--the air conditioner was definitely broken. Then in January of 1997 we made the trek to move our lives to Arizona. We had discussed the fact that moving to Arizona presented a problem with the broken air conditioner in the car. With summer temperatures reaching 115-120 degrees, air conditioning was starting to seem like more of a necessity than a luxury. I was six months pregnant so I would soon have a newborn and I was concerned about the baby (as well as Jumble) becoming overheated during the summer when I had to run errands. We also felt it wouldn't be very professional for Niles to arrive to work each day all hot and sweaty. Now, I know my ancestors survived without air conditioning, but everyone expected everyone to be hot and sweaty back then. Times had changed! Since it was February, we had a little bit of time to stall and try to figure out what we should do. We still didn't have the money to repair the air conditioner. We weren't sure what we were going to do. One day in March it started to get a little on the warm side as I was driving in the car (by now I was almost 8 months pregnant) and a little voice inside me said, "Just turn on the air conditioner and see if it will work." So I did. Knowing that it wouldn't--because it hadn't for years. And guess what? It worked. It blew out perfectly frigid cold air. And it continued to blow out perfectly frigid cold air for the next four years--for as long as we owned that car. The only explanation was that our kind Heavenly Father had mercy on us and decided to bless us with air conditioning. Of course we still think of that miracle with gratitude and amazement.

I know Heavenly Father can fix anything. I don't understand all the reasons why sometimes He fixes things for us, and sometimes He doesn't, but I tell Him that I know He can fix anything, and I am extremely grateful for the times that He does. And the times that He doesn't, I trust that He has a good reason (and often it may be that I am just not doing my part.) What tender mercies has Heavenly Father blessed you with lately?