Adoption Chronicles- The back story, pt. 7

We started thinking about trading in one of our vehicles last spring. Both were about the same age and were getting a little old, (nine and 10 years). The debate was which one to trade. Do we trade in the truck, the older of the two, that we could still get a little bit of cash for in a trade, or do we replace the Neon, which is 9 years but having it's share of issues? Car shopping has always been one of David's least favorite things. He prides himself in always being able to buy the best-of-the-best for the bargain basement price. This is really difficult to do when shopping for a car. We looked pretty seriously for about a month or so, but never found the deal we were willing to fall off the log for. We seemed frozen in our ability to make a decision. So... we didn't make one.

There came a point however when God pushed us off that log we'd been balancing on for so long. We no longer needed to decide which vehicle to replace. He made that very evident to us when David got rear-ended, resulting in a totaled Expedition. Fortunately, even though David was transporting 3 other church staff members, no one was injured. In the end, we received more money from our insurance settlement for the truck than we would have gotten if we'd traded it in. Also, it saved us the anguish of having to decide for ourselves between our two vehicles. One was totalled... done. I guess we'll replace that one. We could no longer drag out our search for a new vehicle indefinitely. The discomfort of having to share one vehicle would force us to make our decision in a timely fashion. (However some very generous friends shared their extra vehicle with us during the interim, allowing us to be slightly particular and not desperate in our search).

We ended up finally choosing a 2007 Saturn Outlook which was purchased for us at auction in Florida. The problem was that it was in Florida and needed to find its way to Minnesota in time for our big road trip. It was a bit of a risk, knowing that if baby decided to show up early, we may have to make the trip before the Outlook arrived. However, all was well when we picked up our new (used) car on Tuesday evening (22nd), and were planning on leaving Friday morning (25th). Just in the nick of time.