Blessing This Material Girl

As God boot camp continues in my life I am having serious growing pains. God's loving correction often stings the ego a bit, but being the kind and loving father that he is, many of his "lessons" are laced with "gifts".
When we mention gifts in the same sentence as God, we think spiritual gifts. Yeah, I got some of that... but my father KNOWS my love language. I'm all about the presents.
So what did he get me????? A car. That's right. God bought me a car.
Basically, I've been driving the same ol' minivan for 6 years. Manual windows, no CD player. PREHISTORIC. We bought it new, but it was a Dodge Caravan, which if any of you have owned one know, they don't have the best longevity.
Anyway, we took it in and our mechanic said the transmission could go at any time. At a minimum of $3000 to fix it, and a Kelly Blue Book of $2500, we figured it might be time to start looking for another vehicle.
OK, this might not sound like a big deal, but we are totally anti car payment, and we just bought my husband a big extension of his manhood truck with a mutha of a payment last fall! Another car payment? I was sweatin' it.
What did we do? We researched vehicles, looked over our finances and PRAYED. We needed something that could fit 7 people AND got great gas mileage. Good luck!
First thing... I found my dream car. It was the new white Mercedes SUV/car conversion, with tan interior. Yeah right. That didn't quite fit into the finance part of it...we wanted to stay under $20,000. Poor me... no Mercedes.
Ah, but in our search I found KIA version of the suv/car conversion that fit 7, and it got 29 mpg. We called a dealership and they had one for $19,900! Perfect.
Now the prayer part. No one wants to add more debt, and I really stressed about this one. 'Cause you know what? God is big enough to make my minivan last FOREVER if he wants. So my prayer was "God, what should we do? I want to follow your perfect will. Do you want me to buy the car and have faith that the payment won't hurt the budget...or....do we keep the van and trust that you'll keep it running."
OK, here is the big lesson. God said "YOU choose. It's not about a right or wrong choice here, it's about having faith that I will provide for you, what ever you choose". This was huge for me. I am a super black and white person. The whole idea of their not being a defined right or wrong answer is a hard concept for me to grasp. All I could think was "wow, God is letting me use my "free will". It's a surprise my brain didn't explode from this total mental shift!
So, God will keep my van running, or help a new car fit into the budget, I just need to have faith! New car, here I come.
I know this is getting long, but bear with me, I'm almost to the part where God buys me the car!
We all load up into the minivan (I cleaned that baby for 3 hours and I still couldn't get the lollipop scum out of the drink holder) and we headed to the dealership. Well, wouldn't you know, they had a my car out front, and get this, it was WHITE, with TAN interior. After our down payment and our trade in value on my not so well kept minivan they came back with a payment of $300. Not bad for a dream car knock off. We figured we would save at least $70 a month in gas, bringing it down to $230 a month.
I drove home my new car without regret, but that night I woke up from a sound sleep and thought. Oh CRAP we just bought a new car. I heard God speak audibly "Are you going to have faith in me or not?". Suddenly a peace came over me and with new faith, I fell back to sleep.
Next morning I get a call from the dealership. "Hey, we approved your loan with good credit, but it turns out you have excellent credit so your interest rate went down, and your car payment went down $30 bucks a month!" I was so excited by this God confirmation that I called my husband to share the great news! So, I told him how God had come through for us because now, with the additional savings we were now down to a $200 car payment. My husband laughed and said, "That's not all God did, this morning, I just got a $200 raise!"
PRAISE THE LORD..... GOD JUST BOUGHT ME A CAR!!!!!!!!!