If you know anything about Joshua and I, you know we continue to learn more about the phrase "A Faith Walk". I am sure if you have ever attended a church, religious organization of any denomination or read religion based books you may have heard this phrase too. Have you ever wondered what it means? Do you feel that you have experienced this in your life? Are you unsure if you are or have had this experience? There are so many questions around this and so many different experiences depending on who you talk to and when! I know that for me, I had heard people talking about it and I had never really given it much thought. This is until we started living this full time life on the road, singing and traveling together gig. You may have heard us talk about our journey at one of our shows...we have MANY experiences to draw from and how we continue to grow in our faith. One story in particular stands out very clearly to me. We were on the road not even a full year yet and we arrived at one of our shows literally barely on fumes with just enough time to set up for our show. When I say barely on fumes, I do mean everything fuel, food, money, energy and a place to stay for the night was truly a blessing to us! In our first year, we had sold our house, closed our business, renovated this bus and leaped off the edge into faith, believing that bringing music to communities that couldn't get out to get music was what we were supposed to be doing. So many "friends", family, business associates thought we were absolutely crazy! My favorite was when a business partner said "People in this community think that you are schizophrenic?" I immediately thought to myself YAY, someone thinks we are crazy so we must be on the right path right? LOL! We literally jumped into this journey with eight shows booked and no plans past those....looking back I think to myself "What were you thinking!" and I am so glad that we did :) Anyway, back to my original story. We arrived for our show at an RV Park that had hired us to perform in exchange for a place to park our bus for a few days. Early on in our journey Joshua discovered that trading for a site was way better than boon docking at Wal-Mart's and truck stops. We unloaded our music equipment and started to move the bus into a site for the night when the buses engine just died all of a sudden. The bus was parked at a very steep angle and when it died it rolled backwards down the steep hill, blocking the entrance to the park and would not start. Oh no...I thought we had probably run out of gas. It was low and since we were at such an angle I thought there must have not been enough fuel to keep it started...this was not good.
I stayed very calm and thought, it is going to be fine. We will set up for the show, I will call roadside assistance, we will do our show as planned and by the time it is done roadside assistance will have our bus up and running again. I made all the calls, we had a wonderful show with really great people, that fed us dinner, sang with us and were so kind to us during this stressful situation...just really good people, many we are still friends with today! Well, my plans hadn't quite worked out as smoothly as I had planned. Every shop that we contacted through our roadside assistance program refused to come out siting that they were not insured and did not have the knowledge to get our bus started again. Somehow, Joshua got the number for a 24 hour truck repair shop nearby to send us a tech. The service call alone was going to be $370 just to look at it! We had $500 to our names and we knew we couldn't do this on our own. The manager of the park donated a cabin to me and our daughter for the night because we were not going to be able to sleep in the bus while they worked on it. Joshua and the tech worked in the cold all night on the bus to get it started enough to limp it into the shop just a few miles down the road the next morning. That was the toughest night we had experienced yet. In between working on the bus with the tech, Joshua would come into the cabin and we would have discussions (intense fellowship lol) about where we were, we were questioning ourselves about whether we were doing the right thing, maybe God or the universe was trying to tell us that this wasn't our path and this was not what we were supposed to be doing...it was the longest night ever, definitely one we will never forget and it was also our 5th wedding anniversary!!!
Joshua and the tech were able to get the bus moved into the shop thankfully without the assistance of a tow truck. Now, it was just a waiting game while they did some more troubleshooting and ordering the parts needed to get the bus running again. Looking back we never know why or who we are supposed to meet in situations like these and sometimes it is just as simple as connecting with kind and generous people. The owner of the shop was so kind, that he not only allowed us access to the kitchen, bathroom and showers while we were living in their parking lot. He also decided to have a BBQ that night for his employees and invited us to join them. Seriously, he spared no expense and treated us so well that night...making us feel welcome in every way <3 Over the next four days we really got to know all of the employees while we were living in the cleanest mechanics shop I think I have ever been in! Believe it or not, Joshua shares that this was the first time in his life that he chose not to be stressed or feel hopeless during circumstances like this. We knew that this bill was going to be WAY MORE than the $500 that we had and we were trusting that it was going to be taken care of somehow. On the day the repairs were done they presented us with a bill for $2,200 (it probably should have been much more than that I am sure and I believe they believed in us and gave us a break to get us back on the road). We shared with them that we had no idea how we were going to take care of it and that the bill would be taken care of. We knew this was way bigger than what we could do and we just started praying and asking that if we were supposed to keep going down the road that this bill would be taken care of. I kid you not within 30 minutes of that prayer we had two separate calls come in and the second caller paid our bill in full!!! Telling us that she believed in our mission and wanted us back on the road doing what we do, bringing joy to others through music <3
I have always heard and used the phrase "Everything Happens For A Reason" and through this journey I get to experience trust, faith, generosity, love, kindness, courage, joy, as well as many other qualities and I am truly blessed! It hasn't always been easy, in fact sometimes it really sucks and I know that every moment is worth it!!!