---MORE THAN COINCIDENCE / - Mysterious Ways

--I SAT ON MY front porch, the letter in my hand, staring at my burgundy five-speed Pontiac Grand Prix and wondering what to do. The car had been in and out of the shop lately. One week a computer chip fried; another week it was the steering column. I held my breath every time I turned the key. And now this. I read the letter again. The major manufacturing company I worked for was shutting down our plant for retooling. I'd been offered a temporary job at our facility in Baltimore, a seven-hour round-trip drive from my home in New Jersey.

I was a single parent. I couldn't afford to move or pull my daughter out of school, but I needed that job. The only choice would be to leave my daughter with my parents, make the drive to Baltimore every Sunday, stay with girlfriends there and then drive back at the end of each week. But there were times my car wasn't even making it around the corner!-

I stepped off the porch and walked around the car. "Lord," I prayed, "please make this car work the way it was intended to. Please, Lord."

For the next 18 months, I drove from New Jersey to Maryland and back every weekend. More than 24,000 miles total. Amazingly, I didn't have one problem with my car, not even a flat tire.

Finally, I was called back to my home plant, with a week off before I had to report. On my last day in Baltimore, I packed up the Grand Prix and happily headed out onto I-95.

Thirty minutes into the drive, the gear shift stuck. Uh-oh. By the time I crossed the Delaware Memorial Bridge into New Jersey, my dashboard was lit up like a Christmas tree. On the Garden State Parkway, I had to floor the gas pedal just to keep up with traffic. The car died the very second I reached my parents' house. ~~

The following Monday morning, I went to the garage where my Grand Prix had been towed. "Lady, your clutch is gone and so's the starter. The battery is dead, there's a defective tank baffle, and I'm not even finished," the mechanic said.

"You can't be talking about my car," I said. "I drove this car back and forth to Maryland for eighteen months..."

"Ma'am, with all that's wrong that that car, you wouldn't have been able to back it out of this garage. Not now or eighteen months ago!"

--GUIDEPOSTS/FB