Our anniversary trip to the ocean didn’t go as planned. Kind of like marriage. Kind of like the weather last weekend. One moment rain, the next sunshine.

I didn’t get to see Muir Woods like I wanted to, and we didn’t make it home in our own vehicle, but we had a wonderful trip, nevertheless. The highlight: meeting a tow truck driver with a skull and cross tattoo on the back of his bald head and a longing for Jesus in his eyes.

But first the rain, and then sunshine, and rain again. And here is what I realized watching out our lodge window after that first rainstorm. As soon as the rain stopped, all these little hummingbirds swirled out with the sun. They worked like mad gathering nectar until the next wave of weather rolled in, then they all disappeared again. And I thought, yes, this is how to do marriage. Hunker down during storms, and gather sugar when the sun shines.

I didn’t expect to see hummingbirds at the ocean. But they were all over Bodega Bay, humming like itty bitty motorboats when it wasn’t raining. Bodega Bay–the place we lost our car keys on the beach in December. And wouldn’t you know it, we left Bodega Bay in a tow truck. AGAIN. A big yellow flatbed from the same towing company as last time.

What are the odds of that?

Scott and I riding in the tow truck for several hours. Which offered a lot of time to talk to Josh, the tow truck driver with the skull and cross tattoo on his bald head. It took about five minutes to discover Josh was a believer, having recently come to salvation in a men’s rehab home where he’d spent a year after falling into some kind of trouble.

“What brought you to salvation there?” I asked him.

“I just got tired of fighting it,” he said. “I finally had to surrender.”

Surrendering was on my mind, too. Not the turning over of my heart to Jesus, I’ve already done that, but turning over my life to tow trucks.

In the past five months, four tow truck drivers have rescued us. Twice with Luke’s car accidents, and two more times in Bodega Bay.

I’m starting to wonder… should we buy ourselves a tow truck?

“How much does this tow truck cost,” I asked Josh as we rumbled down the road.

“About 125,000 dollars.”

“That’s like buying a house,” I said.

“I shouldn’t even be driving this truck,” Josh confessed. “But God let me have this job, and I’m good at it. I like helping people.”

Actually, I wasn’t really thinking about buying a tow truck. I was thinking what is the purpose of our time in this tow truck with Josh?

In the end, we mostly talked about Jesus. Josh shared how hard it was to live for Christ in his tow truck world. “I have two lives,” he admitted. “My life at work. And the life I live at home.”

Of course my mind raced with how to fix this for Josh. What book could I give him? That’s a writer for you, thinking the answer lies in some book. Josh told us he had a Bible, the best book of all. Then it hit me. A book wasn’t going to solve Josh’s problem. I could pray for him, but God would have to do the rest.

So I buttoned up and listened, letting Scott and Josh talk about what it looks like when a man really loves Jesus.

“All these big men crying like babies,” Josh shared about his stay in that Christian men’s home. “Some of these guys were faking it just to get out of there. But some of them weren’t. The ones that weren’t faking really got to me. After six months in that place, I found myself crying one day, too.”

Josh certainly didn’t look like a man who could cry like a baby. If I saw him on the street at night, I’d run the other way. But one look in Josh’s eyes, and you could see it. The light there. That soft shining of a sinner who’s met his Savior.

We spent the entire Sunday morning with Josh. And it felt like church in that tow truck. “Where two or more are gathered, He’s with us,” Josh said.

Later, Scott and Josh prayed together, and then hugged at the end of our journey– two big, strong men hugging like kid brothers at the Dodge dealership service department with other men milling about– and tears of gratitude filled my eyes watching them.

Sometimes we just need the encouragement of each other. Funny how fast a person can get to you. How quickly you can care about someone you just met.

God made this crystal clear to me this week. We went to church for Ash Wednesday, and a woman was there I don’t really know, but I recognized her.  She came up to me and said, “I want to tell you something. You’re my angel.”

I smiled and nodded perplexed. I don’t know this woman, but through the years, I’ve smiled at her in church. And I’ve prayed for her when I’ve noticed her weeping a time or two.

“You don’t know this, but you’re the reason I’m at this church,” she confessed to me. “When I first came here, I felt really uncomfortable. In fact, I got up to leave and never come back, and then you smiled at me. When you smiled at me, I knew I was supposed to stay at this church, and I’ve grown so much here. Thank you.”

Her confession floored me. And humbled me, too. I’d given this woman nothing but a smile. And a few prayers she didn’t even know about. And God did the rest.

God always does the rest.