My wheat grinder

I'd like to share something kind of personal that had a tremendous effect on me.  

Years ago, my husband and I hit a proverbial road block and had to live off our home storage for a while.  My parents had given us a wheat grinder for Christmas the year before and I was using it constantly.  With six kids at home, we were going through a gallon of milk a day.  I'm sure they don't have great memories of drinking powdered milk.

"Mom, my milk has lumps in it"  

"Then chew it!"

I'm joking - that's from a TV show we loved.  My powdered milk never had lumps...

 I was also making eight loaves of bread a week.  Needless to say, my grinder was always in use.  One day while making a cake, I noticed that I had run out of powdered sugar and needed frosting.  In my infinite wisdom, I had this brilliant idea that I could grind sugar.  :-o  I watched in horror as the melted sugar started oozing from the flour outlet.  The moment I turned it off, I realized that it had crystallized and the grinder has frozen up.  Not my proudest moment.  FYI, you can't grind sugar in a wheat grinder.

I grabbed my grinder and tools and ran to find a quite place, which happened to be my bathroom, where I could try and fix it without being interrupted.  

I've always been able to fix things, so I took it apart, keeping detailed notes so I could put it back together again.  I spent what seemed like an hour chiseling at the hardened sugar trying to get it to a place where I thought it would work again.   When I felt like I had gotten as much as I could, I started putting it back together, reversing my directions.  

Everything was working fine, until I got to the gear mechanism.  It didn’t make sense to me, and I couldn’t understand my notes.  I was so close, but I was stuck.  It was finally at that point with tears streaming down my face that I realized there was nothing more I could do by myself and I got on my knees.  I explained my problem to Heavenly Father and let him know how much we needed this grinder right now.  I couldn’t do this without His help.  After my prayer, I went back into the bathroom and looked at my grinder.  I have a hard time explaining what happened next, but it’s as if my mind was opened and I saw that grinder in a different way.  I understood how it worked - it all made sense.  I could have built one from scratch if I’d had to. 

I put the gears back in order, closed it up and turned it on.  It worked!  By the time I had finished attaching the base, I had forgotten everything - I don’t know how I did it.  But for that brief moment, the Lord had given me such a wonderful gift.  He had opened my eyes so I could understand how to fix my problem.

No one can tell me God doesn't answer prayers.  I know He loves us and wants to help us with things that are important to us.  Don't be afraid to get on your knees.