So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It’s your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it. Colossians 3:12-14 (The Message)
I am blogging from a tire store in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. We arrived yesterday after a very long trip that included several misadventures. We left happily enough headed to see oldest son, the one who works for the National Park Service as a law enforcement officer. The one who lives on an island twenty miles out in the Gulf of Mexico. We were to go out there today to stay on Ship Island in ranger housing, but his boss changed his days off so we have a couple of days in town which is a good thing since we had to replace a tire after running over a nail somewhere just before DeFuniak Springs. Husband had commented that one of the tires felt funny, but he thought it was due to a hard space on the tire that he knew about. We had not planned to stop for lunch, but on the spur of the moment, he decided to go to a Sonic in DeFuniak Springs where another customer pointed out the very low tire and husband saw the nail. We walked a few blocks to a Lowes for a can of fix-a-flat which husband used in order to give us time to find a tire store. When the first technician we met at Wal-Mart refused to plug the tire because it was in the side of the tire, I thought we were sunk and would need to buy a new tire. He was insistent if could not be fixed. However, another employee noted we were traveling and offered to put the spare on for us at no charge. Husband was relieved not to have to do it himself in the scorching heat of the Wal-Mart parking lot and slipped him some cash to say thanks. Now, we are in Ocean Springs, and they are fixing the tire with a patch. That Wal-Mart employee was not the only kind person we encountered while travelling yesterday. I stupidly left my purse at the McDonald’s where we stopped for breakfast. The restaurant manager, seeing that we were AAA members, called AAA who tracked us down to let us know. We had just discovered the loss and were four hours down the road in the process of canceling our bank cards, so we’re so relieved that the purse was found and according to the manager still intact. Rather than retrace our steps, and lose a day of travel, the manager has locked my purse in her safe and I will retrieve it on our way home at the end of the week when I am going to need a rest from our vacation! Once we are done here at the tire store, we will go to pick up oldest son at his land based housing in Gulf Islands National Seashore and go sightseeing. Hopefully, we won’t have any more problems, but if we do, I pray more kind people cross our paths. And if we meet someone in need, we will help them as well.
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