David and Ellen and the Terrible, Horrible, No-good, Very Bad Move

Ok, so maybe it wasn't that bad. But it was close. =) I can say that with a bit of perspective since I am sitting here in my unpacked living room with my newly installed cable internet connection and my single allotted 12 oz. soda for the week sitting next to me. This move was definitely a test of endurance and our ability to let go of personal control over things and circumstances. It all started when we rolled out of Birmingham on Saturday, June 10. We had professional movers to load all our things onto the U-Haul truck in Birmingham (thanks to the generous contribution of Bill and Diana, David's parents), and that went great. I didn't do a whole lot to pack thanks to the tireless efforts of my wonderful mother. She wanted to keep Peanut safe, so she didn't want me doing much. So I just sat back and felt guilty. =) So that part went just fine. All of our problems started and ended really with U-Haul of Vestavia Hills. Birmingham friends and family, if you're thinking of using them for anything, please think again. Incompetence seems to be a hallmark of the organization from management on down. We rented a tow dolly to pull our Camry with the U-Haul, and though we loaded the car on it and attached it to the truck at the U-Haul center, we had to take it off in our apartment parking lot to load the truck with our things. When we went to reattach it to the U-Haul truck, the hitch wasn't connecting well with the ball. The professional movers tried to fix it with no luck, and we kept working with it. Then we called the U-Haul center, and their answer was, "Just fiddle with it. Sometimes they get jammed." So we did, and we thought we finally had it fixed. At that point, David, Mom, and the cat headed out to drive to NC, and I went to Bill and Diana's to stay and wait for my flight to DC on Monday morning. I got a call as soon as I got there. David and Mom hadn't made it a mile down the road before a kind motorist flagged them over because the Camry was weaving. Sure enough, the dolly came loose from the hitch. All that was holding it on the truck were the chains. It began weaving, and as a result, the tow dolly banged against the sides of the car, bashing one side in pretty good. Since it hit on the door, we estimate several thousand dollars in cosmetic damage. Thank God for comprehensive insurance, but those rates are going up for sure now. Fortunately, its still drivable. The dolly was broken in the process. U-Haul sent a tow truck for the car and dolly, and David drove the truck back to the U-Haul center. He then proceeded to wait more than four hours for the manager to fix the paperwork to reflect that we no longer had a tow dolly, but now had a new auto transport dolly to haul the car with. This time also included the time it took to put the car on the new system. Most of the extra time seems to have been taken up with the manager disappearing into the back for long periods of time. David is sure he had a pool table back there. During this time, the well intentioned, but inexperienced tow truck driver was trying to figure out how to get the Camry off his truck. He had loaded it on with the dolly still attached, and he couldn't figure out how to get it off. When he did finally get it off, he pulled our front bumper up, scratching it in the process. Poor David. He had to witness all this. Finally, Mom, David, and Kitty left for NC, staying in a hotel that night outside of Atlanta. Once they got to NC, they headed to the storage unit that we'd rented a few miles from my parent's house. The plan was to unload storage things on Sunday and leave Monday morning in time to pick me up at the airport and get to the apartment complex in time to sign paperwork before closing. So on Sunday, David went to the storage unit to find that there was no one there. He had the gate code and what he thought was the storage unit number. But when he got to the unit, it had a lock on it. Since we'd paid for a lock, he figured it was ours. Nobody answered the emergency numbers he called, so he took matters into his own hands. It took three men and a pair of bolt cutters, but he got the door open, only to find that someone else's stuff was in there. There was nothing to be done but wait until Monday morning, messing up the scheduling for picking me up. Fortunately, the storage unit people were very understanding, and we didn't even have to pay for the lock. David called me, and we concocted a new plan. The new plan involved me getting off the plane, taking a bus to the Metro, riding the Metro to our new place in Virginia, and then calling a taxi to take me to the hotel. It was an exhausting day, but I made it there before they did with time to rest. The next day, Tuesday, went smoothly, with movers to unload everything. Mom and Dad followed David up in the minivan to help us unpack everything. Things seemed to have calmed down, until David and Dad took the truck to the U-Haul drop off point. When David handed the man there his paperwork, he said, "How did you drive so many miles over?" David thought, "Hey, maybe 20 miles over the limit for all the little trips back and forth to storage." But the man said, "This says that you drove 3,000 miles over your allotted 874 miles." This is flatly impossible. We would've had to have driven 4,000 miles in 3 days. Vestavia U-Haul had improperly recorded the starting mileage, since the ending mileage was correct. The man had no choice but to charge us $1,400 dollars for the extra miles! That's far more than we paid to rent it in the first place. Also, the manager at Vestavia U-Haul hadn't properly recorded the tow dolly situation during those four hours with our paperwork, so it was showing that we had two tow dollys! As you can imagine, we were pretty upset at this point. It got worse when the national U-Haul hotline wanted us to work it out with the manager at Vestavia U-Haul. After 4 hours and 8 phone calls to him, with him being "busy," "there," and then after being on hold for 8 minutes, "not there," we gave up. He still hasn't returned those messages. Big surprise. We finally got ahold of the right person at national U-Haul, and our money has been refunded and the tow dolly situation rectified. Praise the Lord for that. Factor in a cell phone that just quit working with no warning, a phone that hadn't been hooked up yet because our apartment complex disconnected it for painting, and a car that smells like garlic because we got a bad jar on a grocery run, and you have two frazzled people. During all this and the vacation that followed it, I decided to read a biography of George Muller. He was a late 19th century minister who decided that God had led him to rely only on Him to supply all his physical needs. He did not tell anyone what he needed, even if they asked him directly. He only told the Lord what He needed. And God always provided, not a minute too late, and sometimes not a minute early. His life was an amazing testimony to God's provision. He housed and taught thousands of orphans, and all of their needs were supplied this way, because Muller believed that God will not leave His children who are serving Him to go hungry. These last days have been a challenge to me to believe that God is going to take care of us, even if we meet expensive accidents and fees that we didn't plan for. This life and this adventure is not of our making. We are not in the driver's seat. That has been made abundantly clear to me again and again in the past weeeks. When things are stable, Christians sometimes have the illusion that they control their own lives. When life becomes chaotic, the illusion doesn't hold anymore. Maybe its better to lose the illusion, no matter how uncomfortable that is. At least then we know to go straight to the source of all ultimate comfort and security. I'll write more later about how we're doing now, but I thought I'd give you the story of the journey first.