It was nothing close to the 90mph windstorms that we’d endured earlier that winter, which had left much of our borough without power for days on end.
Nope, just a mild, breezy January evening in Wasilla, Alaska.
But suddenly we heard a loud crunch outside. Curious, my boys looked up from their Lego project and my wife asked from the upper story, “What was that?”
I looked out the window. “Um, that was a tree falling on Hobbes.”
“Hobbes” was a 2014 Hyundai Santa Fe Sport, a vehicle the Lord miraculously provided for us for us two months earlier for a mere $100. It was the nicest, newest vehicle we had ever owned up to that point. We loved it.
And a tree had just fallen on it.
Let me repeat that, with emphasis: A tree had just fallen on the beloved vehicle that God had miraculously provided for us for a mere $100, only two months earlier.
Even more coincidental, Hobbes was parked in a spot that we never normally park in. I had moved it there temporarily to accommodate driveway space for something. And in that span of five hours, a tree had smashed it.
But we’ve learned enough about God to know something was brewing, and so we laughed.
“Well,” I shrugged, sipping coffee and staring at the smashed Hobbes through the window. “I can’t wait to see what He gives us to replace it.”
The ReepiJeep
To get the full impact of what happened in that moment we’ll need to back up to six months earlier.
In July of 2025, my wife had been driving Reepicheep, our ‘05 Ford Focus1 when the accelerator cable suddenly snapped, leaving her and two of our kids stranded on the road.
After about two months in shop—accelerator cables for an ‘05 Focus are pretty hard to find, apparently—Shannon began asking the Lord to replace Reepicheep with a new vehicle. It did have almost 300,000 miles, after all.
“Lord, can we have a new Reepicheep?” she prayed. “Maybe a Jeep? Oooh!!” She grinned. “How about a ReepiJeep!?” We had a Jeep once upon a time, a 2000 Jeep Cherokee, which we had to sell in favor of a minivan once baby #3 came around.
Eventually, the shop found a cord that could be modified to work for Reepicheep. It was taken from a…you guessed it, a Jeep. And while we were grateful to have the car back on the road, Shannon was not impressed with this answer to her prayer for a ReepiJeep.
Enter Hobbes
Around that time we were sitting in church when the pastor handed me the mic and asked Shannon and I to lead the congregation in praying for financial breakthrough.
Less than ten minutes after that prayer, the service ended and Shannon received a phone call. A relative of ours had just received a trade-in for her 2014 Hundai Santa Fe, and the dealer would let her buy it back for only $100.
“Would you and Vince like a car for $100?” she asked.
So we purchased Hobbes for $100 and loved it from day one. The boys loved it because it was a metallic orange color and named it Hobbes after Calvin and Hobbes.
Hobbes was the nicest vehicle we had ever owned, but alas, it had one drawback: It only seated five…and there are seven of us. As great as it was, we still needed a new family vehicle and had no money to spare in finding one.
Then the wind.
Then the tree.
Then a month of insuranceuncertainty before they finally informed us that the vehicle we loved was totaled, and offered us a cash settlement that was less than we had hoped for: $7675.67.
Pay attention to that price because it’s going to be important in a moment.
Now we were in the lurch to find a replacement vehicle that seats seven…that’s not falling apart…in Alaska.
After scouring Facebook Marketplace for a few days, I texted the lovely friend who’d been fixing my sad vehicles for nearly 20 years. He pointed me to a local Christian car dealer he works closely with (I should mention that we’ve avoided car dealerships like the plague for our entire marriage) and said I should give him a call. Another friend also recommended him, and prayed jokingly that we would find another vehicle with enough cash left over to fill the tank with gas.
Reluctantly we checked out his website and, lo and behold, we knew this guy. And he had a Jeep that seated seven.
We rushed to see it the next business day, and now it’s sitting in our driveway.
Now let’s get back to that dollar amount I mentioned earlier, because the Lord is the God of math every bit as much as he’s the God of trees and windstorms and $100 vehicles.
- Price we paid for Hobbes: <$100>
- Amount we got for smashed Hobbes: $7675.67
- Minus the price of the new Hobbes (ReepiJeep): <$7500.00>
- Subtract for a minor replacement part: <$7.99>
- Minus that tank of gas my friend prayed for: <$68.98>
- Total remaining in our pocket: $98.70
Did you catch that? We got all but $1.30 of our original $100 back.
Not only that, but a Jeep that fits our entire family. It’s yet another memorial stone to add along the highway of the Lord’s provision to us.
The Lord knows every need you’re currently facing, and is willing to meet them in unique, possibly snarky, powerful ways.
The antidote to fear is gratitude, even when a tree falls on what we thought was our answer to prayer, because He may have an even better upgrade up His sleeve.
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Footnotes:
1 Reepicheep is the name of the small, valiant mouse in The Chronicles of Narnia. I named it after him because this vehicle had proven itself a small warrior while commuting 270 hours a month for eight years, enduring everything Alaskan winters had to offer.