Have you ever looked at a trial while you were going through it and said it was a blessing? That is hard to do. Often it is only after the trail is over that we can look back and see that it really was a blessing.
As an adult I look at my time growing up on the farm as a huge blessing, although at the time I thought it was a never ending trial. I am sure most of the time my parents thought of it as a never ending too. My wonderful parents had 10 girls and 1 boy. I am the oldest, so I got the opportunity to break in my parents, or just break them. Being a family of all girls in my youth didn’t stop us from doing all the big jobs on the farm. There were many years that we were the only hired help. My father had quite the job to train all of us on the big machinery. It is really no wonder that the equipment had breakdowns when it is mostly being handled by teenage girls. But we held our own in many ways and the machinery survived (all little worse for wear).
One of the many repairs that we learned to make was changing a tire. The jack was always present in the back of the truck, and we had to put it to use many times. I even remember jacking up Dad’s 1066 tractor to change a tire. How grateful I am now for those learning experiences.
In the past week winter has hit Kodiak by force. This is our eighth winter in Kodiak, and I can’t remember a year when it has been this cold and snowy in November. Early last week I realized that I did not want to spend the winter sliding around on the roads. Every day we spend almost 2 hours driving around town. This came about because of a new adventure we undertook this fall, Alyssa, Samantha, and Connor all took on paper routes. They also all start swim team again this month, so our afternoons are pretty busy to get school and paper routes done before swim team. Needless to say that good transportation is very important to me.
So last Monday after sliding my way along to drop off the girls for piano lessons, I went home and dug out my studded tires. They still had some good tread left, but sadly the studds were no more. This lead to me calling all the tire places in town (3 of them) to price restudding. So before dropping Alyssa off at orchestra, (yes, yet another daily destination) I dropped off two tires to be restudded.
The next morning, while Alyssa and Sam were doing online classes, I was found outside in a snow storm putting my newly studded tires on. I choose to only have two restudded for the front and to use the worn out studds on the back. As I was putting on the last tire I found that it was flat and needed to be repaired. Since this is not a life lesson that I have learned, I still had to take the tire in for a flat repair. When I went in to pick up my tire they asked if I wanted them to put it on the car. Many of you reading this may wonder why I didn’t just go that route. Chad likes to point out that I usually fall back on my pride at times like this. However, I did have my own reasons. Having only three tire shops in town, when the first snows come they are all swamped and the wait can be really long. So I opted to save time that I did not have by doing it myself. As the nice young man carried my tire out to the car he commented that not many people know how to put on a tire. I don’t know if he meant not many women or just people in general, but either way I think that is a sad statement. Everyone should know how to change a tire. Having that ability has saved me many times, and I love being able to take care of it myself rather than waiting for someone else.
I guess sometimes trials can be blessings when we learn something that will prepare us for later.
I hope that my kids say the same thing after their trials this winter with the paper routes. Just are a few pictures to show what winter means for them.
