The Lord's lovingkindnesses indeed never cease,
For His compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
Great is Your faithfulness.
Lamentations 3:22-23 NASB
Read previous segments here:
The Beginning
The Injury
The Furnace
The Waiting
Employment
The House
The Phone Call
The Truck
The Car
Yeah, that's a BMW...!
My previous New Every Morning post involved a truck--a SAT truck. It wasn't ours, but it was the vehicle (pardon the pun) by which Fernando earned a month's pay. And speaking of vehicles, we had been juggling five people's schedules (Joe is blessed without one at this point) with two cars. Jake had his schedule and his car, but since his schedule seemed to change frequently, we couldn't rely on having his car to get to wherever we needed to get. The simple truth was that we needed another car. And soon.
One of our friends told Fernando about Car Gurus, so he hopped on that website to see what he could find in our price range. We had set aside X from our insurance settlement to pay for a vehicle. We knew the money would stretch how long we could survive financially this year, but we also knew we really, really needed another car. The car was the wiser choice at this point, so we started looking.
Fernando and Thomas researched several cars, and visited various dealerships, only to find brakes and rotors covered with rust, or some other visible problem. Eventually, Fernando came to the conclusion that X wasn't going to get us a reliable car. He added $1,000 to our X to see if that would bring more positive results, but he and Thomas remained frustrated with their search.
One afternoon, just for giggles, Fernando typed BMW 528i in the Car Guru search box. This had been his "dream car" for forever, and he figured he'd never own one. So, just for fun... The search engine came back with a result: one BMW 528i, $1,000 above our price range even with our extra thou tacked on. Oh, but it was so close!
This 2000 model seemed perfect: although it was 15 years old, it had only 77,000 miles! It seemed to be in beautiful condition. But, it was just out of our price range. Fernando and I chuckled about how funny it would be to buy a BMW when we were broke and just re-starting out in his career field. Oh, well.
A couple of days later, Fernando was back on Car Guru. He pulled up the BMW again, just to dream, just for fun... The listed price had been reduced--by $1,000. He hollered to me that we were going to buy a car; we dropped off Thomas at tech school, and drove over to the dealership. But--it wasn't just any dealership; it was close to home: Mercedes-Benz of Naperville.
So, this broke middle-aged couple just starting out with their own business drove to a Mercedes-Benz dealership to purchase a BMW. One of the sales reps, Brian, went with us for a test drive--I got to drive a BMW for the very first time--then we were were ready to seal the deal. Brian had to double-check the price, because his computer hadn't registered the $1,000 price drop. It was legit, though, and he then asked how we would be paying. By check, of course!
Within an hour, we had signed all the paperwork, written our check, and were driving away with our new-to-us car. I received a dozen roses, and our car was detailed inside and out for us. We felt like royalty!
Then again, we are royalty. We are children of the Lord, which makes us princes and princesses. We walked away (drove away!) from this experience knowing that the Lord lavishes His love on His children, and even though we had been through trial after trial the past few years, this extra-incredible blessing was a love note from Him straight to our hearts.
But, the love note didn't end there. (Yes, there's more!!)
About a week after purchasing the car, Fernando (finally) got a phone call response from the Illinois Department of Employment Security. The worker's comp settlement Fernando received included worker's comp salary for a period of time after the surgery; since Fernando also received unemployment during that time, we would most likely have to pay back the unemployment he received from IDES.
The case worker on the phone got the details from Fernando, then finally explained that since the unemployment and worker's comp covered a period of time at the end of 2013, and the actual payout of the worker's comp owed to Fernando happened at the beginning of 2015, the "books had been closed" and we would not be required to pay back the amount we thought we would owe.
Thomas uses the BMW to drive to school.
And the amount, you ask? It was (about) the cost of our new car. The Lord not only gave us a BMW, He orchestrated the funding for it.
He signed His love note with a huge P.S. He really loves us!
The next segment of our story is now published; click here to continue the journey with us!
Back to life,
Christine
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