My freshly road-licensed daughter who is a brilliant, burgeoning scientist decided to conduct an experiment with physics.
If you were curious to know as apparently she was…it’s true…a car going zero miles an hour in front of you is completely capable of stopping your car.. even if your cool ride is say…going 30 miles an hour.
There will be some squishery on the front of the car. And it may leak like a frightened puppy on the road with Las Vegas’y water sprinkling shows as well. There is so much to be learned.
My beautiful daughter is perfectly sound following the experiment and so…much wiser. But…it left the Reynolds family suddenly one car down and having to resort to hitchhiking and saddling up the golden lab.
Which, as you know, is not the end of the story, because household equipment has a collaborative spirit, a sense of one-for-all and all-for-one about them. So if one goes down, they all conspire to go on a collective strike. A whispery sort of uprising.
When I brought the remaining vehicle to get a routine oil change the next day it, of course, was determined by a sad-faced mechanic to need life sustaining repairs to keep it on the road.
Then, just a couple days later as we were trying to recover from all of this bad news, a sudden noise erupted from the kitchen. Very similar to one made when a locomotive engineer suddenly spots a bull moose standing on the rails before him. Yes…that sound when the train driver begins to grind the brakes, sending a dance of smoldering sparks through the air.
We are mechanically inept in the Reynolds household, but we do know enough to discern that dishwashers are not supposed to make those types of peculiar noises.
My wife admitted, without need of any gentle, loving interrogation, that she had managed to over pack the appliance, causing the spray arm to jam and thereby burning out the electrical engine.
No problem. I did what every well-meaning father should do and announced to my family with patriarchal pomp, “Good riddance. When I was a kid, we survived without a dishwasher and washed all of the dishes by hand. This will build character and teamwork.”
My wife assigned shifts. We broke the task at hand into specified labor divisions. There was some debate as to whether the cook of the day should also be required to wash the pots, but in the end we had a plan.
But then I looked at my family with their bagged eyes and drooping shoulders. Tired and exhausted by living an over-ambitious schedule filled with SATs, ACTs, reams of homework, school athletics, grocery jobs and yes…many home chores. This in addition to living on a budget the past few years that has us counting every penny.
And then I prayed, “God, please heal the dishwasher.”
The next day, I decided to open the offending appliance to see if there was any way I could miraculously repair a burned out engine. As I started to unscrew a few parts and disassemble it I could only imagine I was seconds away from electrocuting myself in the perfect ending to my sob story. Where is the plug for this thing anyway?
It was then that I spotted a thin piece of metal, the cap of a mason jar that had lodged itself under the roller. As I pulled it out, I knew what happened right away.
God healed the dishwasher.
Then I was ashamed. Ashamed we had a dishwasher when so many others hand wash their pots and pans. Ashamed I wasn’t more thankful about the food we have that dirties the plates. Ashamed about complaining about losing one car, when we still had another. Ashamed I wasn’t extraordinarily, unbelievably grateful that He kept my daughter safe during the car accident.
Ashamed that I really didn’t trust God with the assignment of fixing our dishwasher. For not believing He truly wants to be involved in the smallest of details in our lives.
And now the whole family admires and respects a once overlooked, under appreciated and very precious appliance in the house. It exists as a monument, a testimony of faith and greater dependence on Him.
Because God healed the dishwasher.
Looking for more from Michael K Reynolds? You might also enjoy How I Almost Died on Mount Whitney.
Michael K. Reynolds is the author of the acclaimed Heirs of Ireland Series, historical novels set in the late 19thcentury. He is the producer of Crystal Darkness, an Emmy-Award winning series of anti-meth documentaries and was named as one of the 25 most influential Christians on Twitter. You can learn more at MichaelKReynolds.com.
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