It is a blessing!
So much has happened, and no updates here... I actually stopped for a while coz I kept on getting error messages when I tried to submit my entries, and I got fed-up!!
In the end, Dad got me the car. It was a case of miscommunication, or rather, NO communication - he bought the car without telling Mom!! For a while I thought he was just giving it to me, then I discovered that he expects me to pay him back and I plunged into despondency again. Very dramatic, eh? *grin*
But thank God for friends... coz I was feeling like God doesn't want to bless me. Come on, I was praying for a free car and I'd actually been believing in faith that God would do that for me. It's not easy to believe God for something so big, you know. I was upset. But then I spoke to Terence, who quoted me that James 1:6-8 passage about asking and believing, and not being double-minded when we ask. He said we tend to think of blessings as something that "drops from the sky", so we think if we have to take a loan or pay for it, it's not a blessing. But that's not necessarily so. Like for example, he said, if we were going to buy a house, we couldn't expect three hundred thousand dollars in cash to suddenly fall into our laps; we'd probably have to take a bank loan. But God might give us a pay raise later to cover the instalments, or provide for us in other ways so that the instalments are covered. You never know. So Terence said I have to keep on believing in the blessing, and not be double-minded. Wow! That was a revelation!
The car was at home and my dad wanted me to take one week's leave, go home, drive it around my sleepy li'l hometown, then bring it back to the city. Coz you know, even though I've had my licence since 1996, the only times I've ever gotten to drive is when I've gone home on vacation. I procrastinated on applying for leave, tried to clear my workload before approaching the Boss :) But finally, I did, and he approved my leave!
I just got back here on Sunday, 2 days ago... When I went back, I discovered Dad had actually done a lot for me - he got the car transferred into my name, had the family mechanic completely overhaul the engine, changed my set of tyres, had the cushion covers changed. It was like I could see his heart for me in the way he prepared the car - the only thing I needed to do was to get in and drive! After that I really started viewing the car - and my dad - as a blessing. I think God had some healing going on there :)