Sometimes I have stories from my life that I think- boy, if I ever were to speak at General Conference this would be a good story for that... Don't pretend like you've never done that. Ok, so maybe not GC, but maybe one day I'll tell it in a talk or a lesson or something. Story time:
Once upon a Tuesday, about a month ago, I was heading up to campus for my afternoon class and was then going over to Ashley's house so I didn't ride my bike but drove instead. I was thrilled to see a spot open at the bottom of Old Main Hill and snatched up the parking spot. I went to class and did some homework for a while then headed back to my car. I got in, started it up, checked for cars on the road, and then spotted something on my windshield. It was yellow. It made me sad. It was a parking ticket. Apparently at some point since last time I was a student they changed that whole side of the street to 3 hour parking. I was parked right in front of a sign saying so, but in my haste to make it to class I didn't even notice it. I definitely deserved the ticket, but I was still upset by it. As a teaching grad student I got paid each month for my teaching the previous month. This means I didn't get paid until the beginning of October, so basically I was on a tight budget in September. I had many more things I wanted to spend $20 on. But I put it out of my mind by shoving the ticket in between the seats of my car, planning on returning to it when I was a bit calmer. Yeah, didn't happen. Because of that the price increased to $40, which really made me sad. But at least now I could wait until I got paid to pay it, then it wouldn't be as big of a hole in my wallet.
Fast forward a couple weeks. I check my phone after a class and see I got a voice mail from Mom. It was telling me that I got a letter from the police about my ticket. I called her back and explained what happened, so not to worry about the letter. As we say goodbye Mom said something about getting on it and paying it soon so the price doesn't go up. Um, the ticket was almost a month ago, the price has gone up. But the letter apparently said that if I paid it within 10 days of getting the letter I'd only pay the $20 original fee. Sweet! So I had Mom scan in the letter and email it to me so I could hold them to that when I went to pay my ticket, who wants to pay $40 if you can get away with $20? I open up the email and first thing that stands out is the line that says "Make: subar" and I thought "subar? Does that mean Subaru? I don't drive a Subaru..." then I noticed the license plate had 5PM as the last 3 digits. I don't have my license plate memorized, but I would if it had 5pm in it! This surely wasn't my car. The ticket was for residential parking violation, not even the same place as mine. I didn't quite know what to do. I laughed a little and stared at the screen in disbelief a lot. I didn't even know who I'd go talk to in order to get it straightened out. Then a shiny blue button on the screen caught my eye "Appeal". Done. Reason? It's not my car!
Today I got an email in response to my appeal. Somehow something got crossed when they were putting in tickets and my address ended up with someone else's ticket. As a consequence they decided they'd scrap the late fee on my actual ticket if I'd appeal it or give them a call. Yeah, I think I can do that. When I read the email I just laughed. Who'd have thought that accidentally getting the wrong ticket letter could be a blessing?
I think this is pretty representative of life. So many times we look at something that's happening and think "Why? It's just weird/not fair/hard/sad/awkward...." but really without those moments we wouldn't be able to receive blessings later on. I think it's also a good reminder that even though we make mistakes and don't always make the best choices if we will turn to the Lord there is a way for things to get fixed. I had thought a couple of times about how I could get them to not charge the late fee (wishful thinking, you know) but never in my wildest dreams would I have come up with a scheme like that. Turns out Heavenly Father's a pretty smart dude. I definitely deserved the ticket and the late fee, but I'm glad that Heavenly Father saw it as an opportunity to remind me that he's there and cares about even the relatively small things going on in my life.
Ok, maybe it's kinda long for a talk, but still a pretty cool story I think. I guess a blog post will just have to do for it.
