On the Tender Mercies of the Lord

Heavenly Father loves me, even though sometimes I make poor decisions.

My Honda hybrid had been giving me grief.  Most of it was indirect, psychological grief — like plummeting in value in the 2 years we’ve had it.  Some was more direct: bad power, bad miles per gallon, poor cargo room, systems malfunctioning, high maintenance, etc.

Now, I am weak and pretty much neurotic with distrusting cars.  I grew up in a household where we ran cars into the ground, so it was very common to have cars with multiple non-functioning systems at best, or leaving you stranded somewhere at worst.  So I wanted to replace my car, and did a lot of research on cars and sales and looked into used cars and such.

My husband is good and tries to keep us out of debt.  I like being out of debt, too, but my car neurosis was more powerful than that desire.  This put me and my husband at odds.

So when we both prayed about the car situation and came up with different answers, I wasn’t surprised, but I was sad because I figured this meant another ‘no.’

But instead, Jake’s answer to prayer took a different turn.  He listened to me and we bought exactly the car that I wanted.  I felt valued, respected, and loved.  It tore down walls between us.

Later, as I was listening to the LDS Women’s Conference, the Spirit was very strong.  I was feeling guilty because of the debt, but the Spirit spoke clearly to me: the debt was not a good thing, it’s true.  But Heavenly Father loves me and wanted to teach me something more.  It would work out, because Heavenly Father wanted to teach me that I was loved, valued and respected in my relationship with my husband even more than he wanted me to stay out of debt.  The needs of me and my marriage outweighed the needs of my pocketbook.

My Heavenly Father loves me.  So does my husband.

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