Great story here. So I drive out to Maine with Anton to see the sights and climb the hills and shock the locals, etc. All of these things were greatly accomplished. What's better, is I was driving my little sister's Subaru Outback, making me practically a Mainer as 9-10 drive these wonderful litte organic-mobiles. The trip was great, check out the pictures... My plan was to take my time driving back so I could stop halfway in Portville, NY, to tear up the mountains with an '07 CU Alum. I was taking my sweet time, stopping in the little Vermont towns to eat their maple candies and buy their stoneware mugs. I was a mere 20 minutes from my last stop in Benington, VT, right over the border into NY when something went wrong... about 5 engine lights all came on at once. OK Pause. There were a couple possibilities here. I mean, maybe my Sube was thanking me for driving in the homeland and for letting her see all of her old friends from the plant. Maybe she was tired from the climb through thr mountains and needed a break- I chose the latter. Play. So I stop the car on the edge of the road, and as I pull over I hear a very distinct knocking noise. Weird. I open up the hood, and because one of the lights was the oil light, I checked the oil. There was plenty of oil. So I opened the oil cap- smoke. Awesome. I jump back in the ol' captain's chair and try to start her up- but she refuses like a stubborn child- or maybe more like that girl that wouldn't go out with me no matter how many times I asked her. I decide the sensible thing was to find a place to tow her to, so I start calling around. Oh my goodness. I called every Subaru dealer in the area, and find only one that will maybe take her the next morning in Albany about 20 miles away. Because it was a weekend, not many places were open. I call a tow, and wait 2 hours for the rig to show up... We finally drop the car off and I trek 10 minutes to the cheapest motel I could find (I checked on 6) and settled on "America's Best Value Inn" weighing in at mere $80. More like "America's Best Rip-Off Inn"... I enter my "non-smoking" room that smelled like Cary Grant's ashtray, threw my backpack on the bed, and entered the bathroom. The lights didn't work. After working on the issue for an entire hour as I watched HGTV's "America's Next Top Designer", the manager informs me I need to switch rooms. I ask about a discount, and he blankly stared at me. But be not unimpressed, folks, because I pulled a full $3 discount from the guy! I woke up at 12:00 and a rat ran across my room floor. I went back to sleep. I woke up at 7:00 and walked to the dealership. I waited 6 hours before they finally look at it and inform me that due to a freak accident deep inside the engine, the engine has completely seized up and is no longer functional. I begin to curse Albany under my breath. We decide the best option for me to get home is via rental vehicle. After paying an arm and a leg because I'm not 25, I get a taxi to take me to the rental place where I pick up a cute little Cobalt. I merge into traffic going with the flow of traffic WHEN A FREAKING COP PULLS ME AND ANOTHER GUY OVER SIMULTANEOUSLY. He was unimpressed with my sob story and gave me the speeding ticket. He said that even though everybody was going as fast as we were, we were the lucky two he got. I didn't even know if was possible to pull over two vehicles at the same time. The rest of my ride home was fairly uneventful. My brother-in-law picked me up in Flint at the rental place and I finally got home around 3:30am. The next day I get into my Jeep to drive down to Ohio to fly out to see my brother in Colorado. My car won't start and I miss my flight. It's true, folks, everything I touch falls apart. Luckily, I caught the next flight out, and now I'm in paradise! "They" say that when it rains, it pours. "They" are usually wrong, but in this case, "they" are very right. I don't know who "they" are, but I'd like to kill them. Excuse me, "they". We face these little tests everyday. Sometimes they come one at a time, but sometimes they come in 2's or 3's or 4's. I refuse to let my life be defined by these tests. Rather I hope that my life is defined in my response to them. As I climbed Mt. Washington earlier in the week, I stopped above treeline to try and catch my breath. I was exhausted. I looked around me and saw incredible beauty- and then I looked down and saw that the largest plants on the ground were flowers a mere inch off the ground. Here is life in trying conditions- hardly any oxygen at all, but the mountain flower still pushes and manages to grow and hold on to whatever life it can. I was struck at how fragile life is, but how sovereign God is still above all of it. That flower groaned with all creation and found victory because of the strength its Creator gave it. It challenged the mountain- and won. Will my response to difficult situations be to give up, or to challenge the mountains and win? When I realize that God is sovereign over everything, I can't let seized engines and midnight rats hold me down. He's given me the victory already. But because I'm human, I'll probably keep asking why and further prove my difficulty in trusting my Creator. Oh that I could be like the mountain flower and just press on... | 
