Don’t Give Up Hope…
…Everything Is Already Taken Care Of
We don’t often use our car for local shopping. Paul prefers to walk or cycle, but tonight it’s too icy to cycle, so he took the car out to pick up a few things he needed from the store.
Our next expected road trip is a long-distance journey down to Dundee to celebrate my 60th birthday and bring our son home for Christmas. However, we’ve just discovered it wouldn’t have been the pleasant birthday experience I was expecting.
Crash, Bang, Stop…
On the way home (note, this is after Paul had bought what he needed) there was a loud crash, the car stopped and the engine roared. Paul got out to discover that the passenger wheel was now sitting at a 90 degree angle to the car, which was now stuck on the junction of a busy road. The driveshaft had detached, leaving the wheel hanging and creating a hole in the gearbox that triggered an oil spill in a rather dangerous location.
A local passer-by (reluctantly on his way to a family event he didn’t want to attend) stopped to offer help. He notified the police of the oil spill while Paul tried to connect to the emergency breakdown services.
Pick-up services in the north of Scotland are often slow and apparently, tonight is a busy night for the local call-out guys, so the expected wait was estimated at 3-4 hours. Which means it may be longer.
Poor Me?
Not wanting to leave the car in a dangerous location with an oil spill, Paul pulled the Parkinson’s card… “my wife’s at home and she needs me”… – which I was, but I didn’t need him – so it feels uncomfortable having that as an excuse when someone else may really require priority services. However, that’s my perspective, Paul may have a different one. Sitting with that discomfort, the best I could offer in that moment was to send love to the situation asking that everyone and everything receive whatever care is needed.
An hour later, Paul arrived home. The pick up truck hadn’t arrived but the local police had, and were now sitting with the car, releasing Paul and his new buddy, to carry on with their interrupted activities.
I later discovered the reason there is such a long wait for call-out services is because most local garages refuse to offer their services to this particular national breakdown service provider (“they don’t pay enough to cover our costs”). However, because our generous passer-by had contacted the police, everything was now being taken care of.
To The Rescue
Our local police force has a contract with one of the garages who refuse to work with the breakdown service provider. Because Paul’s oil spill is a hazard the police have arranged to pay the garage to pick our car up. So the garage, will now receive the rate of pay they need, and the service provider will be refunding the police force. Which means the over-stretched local pick-up guy (who would have been coming out to Paul) is now free to attend to my ‘imagined’ friend whose needs are greater than mine. It seems that my appeal to send love to all involved was received before it was even in my awareness. And, if there is no ‘real‘ person in greater need, whoever else is waiting for help won’t have to wait quite so long.
Everyone’s Has Received Care…
…except maybe the Breakdown Services’ Financial Director and, maybe there’s something else going on there that I’m not aware of?
The Greater Story…
Of course, this is really only one more short ‘story’ to add to millions of other short stories that feed the ‘drama’ of daily existence. However, if you care to look a little deeper, you may discover (as I have) that there is a greater story being played out here. This may only be one small, almost insignificant event in my life, but there are others – many others occurring everywhere, every day, in everyone’s life. And sometimes with quite significant outcomes. I believe that this is the greater story, and I believe it is trying to tell us that everything in life is not quite as it seems.
