Memorial Box Monday: The Wrench

For a long time now I've been wanting to participate in Memorial Box Monday, a bloggy carnival (I'm still a bit of a newbie....am I using that term right?) hosted by Linny at A Place Called Simplicity. Memorial Box Monday is a way of being intentional - which we all know I'm trying to be better about - in remembering the awesome things God has done for us. They may be huge, earth-shattering things, or things that would seem small and insignificant to others but nevertheless are huge to us.

A Memorial Box is a place to keep mementos that remind you of these amazing stories. You can read more about MBM here or by clicking on the picture below.


The idea is based on these verses from Joshua chapter 4:

When the whole nation had finished crossing the Jordan, the LORD said to Joshua, "Choose twelve men from among the people, one from each tribe, and tell them to take up twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan from right where the priests stood and to carry them over with you and put them down at the place where you stay tonight." So Joshua called together the twelve men he had appointed from the Israelites, one from each tribe, and said to them, "Go over before the ark of the LORD your God into the middle of the Jordan. Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, to serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you, 'What do these stones mean?' tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever."

So the Israelites did as Joshua commanded them. They took twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, as the LORD had told Joshua; and they carried them over with them to their camp, where they put them down. Joshua set up the twelve stones that had been in the middle of the Jordan at the spot where the priests who carried the ark of the covenant had stood. And they are there to this day....

On the tenth day of the first month the people went up from the Jordan and camped at Gilgal on the eastern border of Jericho. And Joshua set up at Gilgal the twelve stones they had taken out of the Jordan. He said to the Israelites, "In the future when your descendants ask their fathers, 'What do these stones mean?' tell them, 'Israel crossed the Jordan on dry ground.' For the LORD your God dried up the Jordan before you until you had crossed over. The LORD your God did to the Jordan just what he had done to the Red Sea when he dried it up before us until we had crossed over. He did this so that all the peoples of the earth might know that the hand of the LORD is powerful and so that you might always fear the LORD your God."

I actually won a Memorial Box in a giveaway Linny held last November, and I'm embarrassed to say it's taken me this long to write my first post. I'm hoping it won't take another 6 months until I write another one! Here goes.

The summer after I finished 7th grade, my brother, Cary, and I took a road trip to go to the high school graduation of my other brother, Coy. (Side note: Cary and Coy aren't my real brothers - they're really my cousins - but that's a post for another day. Just know that any time you hear me talk about my brothers, this is who I'm talking about. And there's another one, too. His name is Guy.)

Cary was 21 and in the Air Force. I was 13 and had just finished 7th grade. In fact, if I remember right, I actually got out of school a day or two early so that we could be on time for graduation. We were literally driving across the country....from Texas to a little town called Tonasket in Washington State - the very northern part of the state, no less. Almost to Canada. Cary was using the opportunity of his little brother's graduation to deliver a pickup to his older brother, Guy....an old, beat-up, barely running, SINGLE cab, baby blue Ford pickup. [Another side note: how funny is it that when I first met my husband, he drove the exact same kind of pickup? :)] I don't know what my mother was thinking. Seriously, I can't imagine that I would EVER consider letting Kloe do that at that age.

It was a 3 day drive. We had Cary's dog with us (uh, yeah, a rottweiler), a Stray Cats cassette tape that we nearly wore out, and a styrofoam cooler full of Cokes, bread, and turkey baloney. Yeah. First class. We must've looked like the Clampetts.

My memories of the trip are spotty, but what I remember most is pouring oil into that pickup like it had a sieve for an oil pan, running out of gas over and over again because the gas gauge didn't work, and spending 1800 miles sitting next to a hulking dog who alternated between loving me and hating me.

It was so evident that God had His hand on us every single mile of that trip. There is no way we would have made it otherwise.

• I remember running out of gas on a freeway somewhere in Colorado. Thank God we were actually close to a city! Cary pushed the pickup up a hill and let it roll down as far as it would go, but then he had no alternative but to walk to a gas station. Looking back now, I have no idea why I didn't go with him, but for some reason that I can't remember, I stayed with the pickup. Surely there was a good reason at the time. He assured me the dog would protect me. (ha)


• I remember that various parts of the engine were rigged and wired and barely held together with whatever Cary could figure out at the moment. The fuel line was literally tied together with a shoelace.


• I remember seeing snow as we drove through the mountains in Washington, even though it was June. That was a bright point. :)


• And I remember thinking we could make it into Tonasket that last night. We tried, but Cary just got too tired and so we had to stop. Now remember, these were the days before cell phones....we didn't have a laptop with wireless internet....no GPS. We just had to find what we could for a place to stay - and that turned out to be a rest stop on the top of a mountain in Montana. I remember it was sooooo cold. Oh yeah, did I mention that the passenger side window was out? Cary leaned up against the driver side door, I leaned up against him, the dog laid on me, and we tried to sleep. Every time I would try to move, the dog would growl at me. It was a long night.

So besides the fact that we probably should have been a statistic more than a dozen times on that trip - and obviously God had sent a legion of angels to protect those two outoftheirminds kids - here is the main point of this Memorial Box Monday story.

At one point on the trip we had stopped to get something to eat, and when we got back in the pickup to leave, it wouldn't start. Again. We were in the middle of nowhere - the hamburger place was just a tiny little trailer somewhere in the Wyoming wilderness. Remember, no cell phones or computers. And certainly no money to pay a tow truck to come that far out in the boonies.

Cary looked under the hood and tinkered with a few things but nothing was working. He got back into the pickup and said, "I need a 1/2 inch wrench." He dug through his tool box but came up empty. He tried every other wrench he had, but none would work. It had to be a 1/2 inch. He tried and tried and messed with it and worked with it for over an hour, to no avail.

Finally in pure frustration he got out of the pickup and started pacing around the dirt lot where we were parked. By now he was really agitated and was probably saying some things I shouldn't repeat on my blog. :) I remember him saying over and over, "I need a 1/2 inch wrench! A half inch! Why don't I have a 1/2 inch wrench?!" Imagine how frustrated he was. As he was pacing and murmuring, he KICKED the ground....and there under the dirt was - apparently - a BRAND NEW half-inch wrench.

No. Way.

Cary hung his head and chuckled in amazement. It truly was exactly what he needed. He was able to fix the pickup, and we were on our way in just a few minutes.

Just last week I was talking to Cary on the phone and mentioned the story of our little escapade. He laughed again and said, "Yep, I still have that wrench."

Going in our Memorial Box will be a brand new, 1/2 inch wrench to remind us that God sees, that He knows, that His eye is on the sparrow and He cares. That we are inscribed on the palm of His hand and He will not forget us or forsake us - even when we're not making the wisest of choices. The wrench will be a reminder of how God miraculously provided exactly the thing we needed - tangibly - at exactly the time we needed it, in order to save two crazy kids that day on a mountain in the middle of Wyoming.