The Blonde Bomber

8:00 a.m. UGH! Morning sickness and a headache again, g-r-e-a-t! No food in the house, money in my purse, or gas in the truck. Geez! This pregnant girl needs to do something and do it now! Opening every drawer and checking every pocket and place in the house where there might be some loose change, I hoped to scrounge up enough money to put gas in the truck and make it to the store to cash a check and get some food to solve my immediate dilemma.
Wow, $2.00! Climbing into my 1960 International Harvester pick up truck, I pray, and I do mean pray, that I am able to make it to the nearest station so I can, "fill up". You see, I live outside the city, in a rural area, so I have a little ways to go, and a little bit of lonely road to pass before I feel safe enough, just in case I do get stranded.
It's a stormy day in the Rockies, and I put the radio on. The tension I feel only increases the nausea of being two months pregnant with my first child. But alas, sweating every second of the journey, I finally make it to the truck stop safely. I breathe a sigh of relief and give thanks to the Lord. My day will go according to plan.
Embarrassed at giving the attendant my change, I rush out quickly to feed my truck every last drop of petrol, hoping it will be what I need to make it to the grocery store. So, I grab the nozzle and in seconds I reach the limit of what $2.00 can give me. I put the nozzle back, finishing my task in the time it takes to breathe a full breath and hop back in. As I turn over the engine, a car pulls up in front of me to get gas, so I will have to back up now, to get on my way.

The rain is pouring down hard, so I put my wipers on at full speed. The radio is blasting away as usual, since I have been losing my hearing steadily for years now. So with the noise from the rain, the wipers and the blaring of the music, I can only detect a faint sound now coming from outside my vehicle; people, yelling at each other. I glance forward and see the guy in front of me dart off in his car. I still hear yelling, and I think, "hmm, the man must have not paid for his gas."
As I begin cautiously to avoid the vehicles parked behind me that were there to be serviced, I twist my torso to get a good look and move carefully backwards. I still hear voices and believe my first assumption about the commotion and continued.
Suddenly, while I still had my foot on the gas, my truck jolts to a halt. Quite puzzled, I look in front of me and see a wall of flames about 30 feet high outside my windshield. I quickly assess that the man in front of me who darted off had something to do with it. I hop out of the truck, and discover something entirely different was going on.
There, in front of my truck on the ground was a gas pump, pulled out of the cement moorings and dragged about ten feet away from where it had been, still connected by hoses to the drum below. Then my eyes follow carefully the line from the pump to the nozzle that was attached to the front bumper of MY TRUCK!
"Oh my GOSH, my husband is going to kill me!" were the first words out of my mouth. Then my mind had to re-calculate like a GPS does when re-routing a plan for when you miss your turn in spite of the help. It became quite clear to me now that all the yelling and commotion was directed at me.
In my brief $2.00 fill up, I had lassoed the hose to my bumper and brought down the "bull", dragging it from its place without feeling a bit of resistance to my hefty Harvester until it came to a dead stop.
Many people came out of the neighboring businesses to watch the drama unfold. As I gazed in dread at scene in front of me, I kept repeating my first words over and over, "my husband is going to kill me!" Then I looked at a flow of gasoline coming up from the ground, making its way toward my truck. Envisioning it bursting into flames, I felt sure that if the truck was torched, there too, I would be also. In my panic I grabbed a mechanic and asked him frantically if he would attempt to unhook the nozzle from the bumper so I could move my truck to safety, and he did so successfully. My life might be spared.
I watched with all the others the fire trucks arriving, and some reporters from a nearby radio station came by to get the scoop. Then the fire trucks began to spray water on the gasoline fire when they suddenly realized they had made a mistake, and spread the fires damage further. While waiting for the proper trucks to arrive, a reporter sniffed me out to get my story. "It's the blonde, over there" someone said.
As I spurted out my first notions of what I thought was happening, some friends from my church detected my voice on the radio. Without haste, almost the whole congregation soon arrived to support me. It was a circus, with some of my friends commenting how it reminded them of the many times we have had bonfires at my house, singing songs while roasting marshmallows. Some employees glared back in disapproval, while I nodded in embarrassment.
Months later, after the circus was over, reality hit. An official letter arrived at our trailer home, addressed to me from a large oil company. I was being sued for a very large sum of money for damages as was outlined in the letter. Apparently the owner of the gas station was on vacation and had four of his classic Cadillacs in the shop to be worked on while he was gone. All of them were destroyed in the fire.
For the next three years this case was looming over our heads and in my mind it set our fate to live our lives in poverty. I had not met with the lawyers or set foot in a court room in that time. Now, full term in my second pregnancy with twins, I receive a call from my lawyer. A date is set and I am rehearsing and being prepared to give my statement for the jury. Because of my condition, they quickly moved the trial date, and there I was.
I waddled up to the witness box to give my testimony, barely fitting in the cubicle. I lay out my full story before the jury, when one from the group raises his hands and asks to meet with the judge in chambers. Some time lapses before the jury returns. And after everyone was seated, the gavial comes down upon the judges desk. And he dismisses the case right then and there.
Shocked and relieved, the Judge explains that this man from the jury had a similar case brought against him and won his case. Really? You have got to be kidding me. What are the odds of that happening? The lawyer explained how this meant it set precedence, which provided some strength to the verdict in my favor, establishing it as protocol for future cases like mine.
Later, down the road we found out that the extended length of the hoses, and a faulty shut of valve, not to mention that the firefighters had made there mistakes, had some bearing on the matter. Soon, some safety changes were put in force, and so we now have, retractable hoses.
As I made my way home that day, I could not help but think of the Lord who rightly judges, and how He had set up such odds in my favor. And when I reflected on the man from the jury who had gone before me with his case, so that the gavial would come down with a pound and declare me free of the charges brought against me, releasing me of the debt that I could not pay, my heart filled with gratitude, for what Christ my advocate, had done for me.