#SilverLinings

You've heard the saying "Every cloud has a silver lining." But how often do we take time to look for those silver linings? I'm obviously not talking about literal silver linings on clouds. I've looked at plenty of clouds and not seen a hint of silver on them. I'm talking about the bright spots in seemingly bleak circumstances or just ordinary events. Let me share a few personal examples.

The middle of February, as my husband was driving home from work (and almost home), he heard the telltale thump, thump, thump coming from his front driver's side tire...yep, it was flat. He made it safely into the driveway. #SilverLining

We had no way to get the flat tire off and couldn't afford to get it replaced anyway. So it sat in the driveway. Almost a week later, a friend from church who has helped with some car repairs in the past "happened" to stop in the pawn shop. Drew told him about the tire and he said he would come take the flat one off. #SilverLining Then, Drew received a Facebook message from a friend saying that if we could get the flat tire off, they would pick it up and take it to be replaced. #SilverLining So, thanks to friends, we got the tire taken care of and Myrtle was back on the road.

About 2 weeks ago, Drew had to go to a meeting on the other side of South Bend. With his car not having a muffler anymore, he needed to take my car. He stopped by home to switch cars to make the trip. I had been having issues with one of my tires through the winter. He looked at the tire just to be sure he was good to go. Nope! The steel tread was showing through on it. I needed to carefully drive it to Walmart to get a new tire. He ended up taking his car to South Bend. I took my car to get the tire. I made it there, got the tire and was safely back on the road. #SilverLining

Later that night, I was settling in to bed since I knew he would be home late from his meeting. I had turned off the lights, pulled up the covers and was ending my day with prayer when my cell phone rang. It was my husband. He had another flat tire and was stuck in a church parking lot a couple miles from home. I went and picked him up since we had no way to get the car home. Again, we were left with no way to remove the tire or get a new one. A couple days later, a friend helped us get a used tire for it and one of Drew's customers willingly drove over to take the flat one off and put the new one on. #SilverLiningPart1 The real blessing here was partially the fact that it happened so close to home but that it happened then when I was able to pick him up. Had he not had to drive his car to South Bend, it would have happened the next day on his way to work when I wasn't able to pick him up and he would have truly been stranded. #SilverLiningPart2

Both cars are now back on the road and things are going well...right? That's what we thought. But we were what I like to call WRONG! On Wednesday, Drew was taking our daughter to work. As he was driving, the alternator went out. He was able to get the van safely back home. But we're now back to one car again. As I was driving him to work this morning, we were going down a fairly busy road with no space to pull off on the side. He said, "It's a good thing that happened yesterday on my day off. If it had been today, I would have been right about here when I broke down." #SilverLining

So, God prompted me with something. As dark as things may seem right now, there's always a #SilverLining in there somewhere. So, I'm going to start focusing on those. You might see this hashtag show up on lots of things from me. It's time we stop focusing on the negative and start focusing on the positive.

#SilverLining