Ouch, Ouch, Ouch

Here's Casey standing next to his broken down vehicle on I-5. The tow truck is taking the poor van away. Just two days ago, one of his employees called from Salem, telling him that Casey's little blue truck's radiator burst on the freeway and he was stranded. We laughed it off as the truck was pretty old and run-down and a salvage yard towed it for free. We can handle this little trial, we said. Then, two days later, I'm on the phone to Casey as he's driving his silver van to Salem and in the middle of the conversation, he says, "Uh-Oh, I think my van is dying." Sure enough, it completely died and I had to go rescue him. Okay, we say, we can handle this trial too. Then, as I'm desperately trying to catch up on laundry from our trip to the beach, the entire computer system on my dryer fries and it dies. Really? This morning we continued to smile (through gritted teeth) until we got the call from the repair shop. The van's timing belt broke and since he was going 55 mph, destroyed the valves on the inside of the engine. Estimated cost? $3,000. Since we have to have a second car and since it would cost us more to buy a van of the same year and mileage, we're forking over $3,000 to the mechanic. Ouch, ouch, ouch! We're also buying a new dryer as the computer part costs as much as a new dryer. Ouch, ouch, ouch! Add all this expense to the $1400 it cost to replace Casey's damaged hard drive data in December, and our savings is going fast! Thank goodness for tithing...I'm sure the Lord will make things okay in His own due time. Meanwhile, what lesson should we try to glean from this experience? (other than to change our timing belts every 60,000 miles.)