Only by the Grace of God

One of these days I'm going to have to blog about how many times I've almost accidentally set this house on fire during the 15 months we've lived here (hint - at least four). Today is not that day, but it's close!

Today is about those nagging feelings that just won't go away, which I believe is the voice of the Holy Spirit or a Guardian Angel trying to guide me in right paths. There are so many examples in my life of when I followed the promptings of that voice and was rewarded in some way, and the other times when I disregarded the voice and later came to regret it. It's about all those times when seemingly insignificant pieces of the puzzle all come together to reveal the fingerprints of God guiding my life.

Take today, for instance. It's a gorgeously warm day for fall - in the 80s again after a week of cool and damp. We got off to a later start than I'd hoped due to a late night, and I didn't even bother starting school with any of the kids because I had to take 13yo Brian to a doctor appointment at 10:00, which really chops up the continuity of the day. I grabbed Brian's vocabulary book, left the other school kids with some loose instructions, and headed out the door without breakfast (or coffee).

I need to add here that Brian hasn't been wearing his glasses for about a week, and it's really been difficult for him to read. Trying to look up his vocabulary words in the dictionary with microscopic print was next to impossible. He said he had no idea where his glasses could be. I had an inkling of where to find them (on the third floor, in the rec room, on the large table on which Scott and I built a thousand-piece puzzle in two hours a few nights ago - which was another late night, but it was good to spend time with him :-)

Needless to say, when the appointment ended an hour later I was in serious need of nourishment. When we got back home, when Brian asked me what's next for school, I replied, "Lunch!" I made a cheesesteak with salsa for myself. He grabbed frozen hamburger patties, thousand island dressing, and an onion, and went upstairs to the other kitchen on the third floor to make himself a homemade big mac.

We spent the next two hours on the first floor, doing schoolwork. And we picked up the vocab book again. After struggling with the dictionary for a few words, I just felt at that particular moment the compulsion to go look for his glasses. So I headed upstairs to look.

My first impression was that the rec room, which is usually cool, was unusually warm. But it's unusually warm and sunny outside, so no biggie. My second thought was that those darn kids left all the overhead lights on again. I gave the large table the once-over, looking for Brian's glasses, which were sitting atop the panoramic puzzle of New York City (which was challenging but not impossible - I never imagined we would finish it in two hours! But Scott was a man on a mission that night...)

I grabbed the glasses and went over to turn off the light switches, which are located in the kitchen area of the rec room. And it was even warmer over there. I was about to walk out of the room when "something" made me step back to the oven. I suspected that Scott might have left it on last night when he was baking "pain au chocolat" for French club today.

I held my hand over the stove, and it was more than unusually warm. And I discovered that it wasn't that Scott left on the oven. No, Brian cooked his hamburger on the electric stove burner, and instead of turning the front burner off, he accidentally turned the wrong switch and turned the back burner on. Then he left the room with both electric burners on high. There was a metal baking sheet on the other burners, and a paper towel was a few inches away. I don't think it could have caught fire, but thankfully, I'll never need to find out.

Incidents like this leave me feeling so warm (no pun intended) and secure in the knowledge that God cares enough about us that He protects us, not only from outside dangers, but also from our own stupidity and carelessness.