“Mommy, I have to go to the bathroom,” my eldest daughter complained. She wasn’t the only one. We’d been driving for hours on the loneliest piece of highway I’d ever seen. After a bathroom break at the nearest clump of bushes we went back to counting the miles.
We were heading north because the farm machinery business grandpa owned had collapsed due to the drought. We had a lot of used machinery and just maybe the folks in the far north might buy it since the drought hadn’t hit them. But I wasn’t very full of hope. We’d hit some hard times and the place we were headed seemed like the end of the earth.
Grandpa was bent on starting an auction mart. So we sold the house we’d owned for only six months, packed up the kids and the cat, and with somewhat heavy hearts and ponderous prayers, we were on our way to the Peace River country.
Once we arrived it took us a while to convince the town folk that we were serious business people, but when we put our daughter in school and started attending church, they warmed up some.
Our first auction sale was in an unused building in the middle of winter. It was bitter cold and my hands were like ice as I served the coffee. One cup spilled across the counter and I grabbed a dish cloth to wipe it up. Before I could proceed it had frozen in a solid sheet!
My husband was having his own troubles as no one wanted to buy canning sealers in the middle of winter. He laughingly offered to throw in his wife and still there were no takers.
But that wasn’t the end of his difficulties. That spring when a farmer brought some cattle in for sale, he realized he was terribly allergic to cattle. Obviously our future would have to be elsewhere.
It had been a very rough winter. Our savings were gone and I’d been running a local motel to keep a roof over our heads. Christmas toys were three-dollar dolls for each of our girls.
God knew we were desperate and one day we heard about a job opportunity in the city south of us. With a smile and a kiss I sent my husband on his way, spending the rest of the day entreating God to please help us … and He did.
“I got the job, honey!” he hollered as he came in the door. “And there is a little house we can buy because the local banker will let me take a loan on the truck.” The government had recently allowed a very low down payment for first time buyers.
So many things fell into place; God had been so faithful. Our move was the best move we ever made and a place that once had seemed like the ends of the earth turned out to be the end of the rainbow.
